Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 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. 

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. are we calling it definitive i think it's definitive 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 uh show about tentatively definitive tentatively definitive we we reserve the right to change our minds at any time uh trends and things and news in general changes so quickly uh 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 this is going to be primary 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 i know i think everyone's counting down the moments to kind of 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 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 to be online it's kind of like uh digital a lot of my job i'm gonna buy you a t-shirt that says that yeah digital it's my job like a digital guy yeah but um uh yeah like a higher i'd say like a higher portion of my learning entertainment and everything is kind of moved even further online um like i had a lot of concert plans at the beginning of the year and some tickets that i had to get returned returned but um i attended a lot of live stream concerts a lot of artists were doing bedroom stuff a lot of people

were doing um like green screen stuff one of my favorite artists did a show at the Red Rocks amphitheater completely empty and um 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. Oh, but I like it. Yeah. Interactivity within the interactive. Yeah.

But like I think, yeah, that was the biggest resonator for me was shifted digital. More 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 AdGab, a few other segments that we do. 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, curbside pickup's been around, but itin grocery places been around 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. 19. I think what it increased the, people start to adapt things when they're ready and try things on their own time. Suddenly it became necessity to try these things because if you were going to do or get these experiences and or products the only way 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 month ish 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 uh 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% of all sales were online. Yeah.

All sales. I could close my mind when I read that stat before COVID. So as far along as we had come, there was still the bandwidth, the headroom, as you call it, was still so vast. Yeah. The headroom, as you call it, was still so vast. And even now, I think we've gone, there was anticipation of a couple points a year, but I 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, the like product life cycle, like a lot of people when they talk about trends, they're talking about the like trendsetters 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 this 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 grhub, 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 year 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 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 he was already a really wealthy dude. If you've seen that video clip he's got robot arms now like yes like doc ock from spider-man so it's game over at this point yes

exactly and i and and before anyone quotes me uh i'm joking i uh have no ill will towards jeff bezos and 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 is is that if you got 30 billion and versus 100 billion i'm sure he thinks there's there's a difference but i remember my first billion yeah i know i i've kind of lost track of mine you know but i spin it too quickly in the casino um 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 the formats and any like things just kind of like obviously we just talked about digital as a whole and the transformation that's that's just the 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. hurdles, anytime, um, is kind of like when you're like messaging people, usually like a really effective way to go about it is building that, that FOMO, 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, people using your product your service testimonials and stuff yep and um 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 um where they want to join in um and so that was a kind of

a big hump to kind of get around um and so it took a lot more kind of building social engagement um kind of collecting those views collecting those likes and comments on posts so people were kind of creating a community online um and like and like really a big, a big change was I saw this really successful brands did this. Um, and then we, we did this with a few of our clients is 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 give feedback like really just engage and create a conversation um 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 um weird 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 summing 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 um kind of like opening the doors up a little bit and kind of really being honest was really effective but just being like

hey like you get online and you just talk to your your people like you don't even have to talk about 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 you're a 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 like 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 listen to. It's like, we've gotten closer by being apart. But in some ways, the brands that have done well probably'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 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 we'll 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 a an effect uh uh riley i would have wanted like anyway yeah uh maybe it's not that insightful, but we'll pretend that it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no.

So, Josh, let's transition to 21. You know, not that we're going to start in order, but is there – I do want to just – and I will say, these are 2021 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 kinds 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 teed 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 a key number one. Key number one. number one wow jumping right into jumping right in i 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. Um, and I think it's time to do mostly digital ads. Um, and it's time to kind of do more, more like cohesive content, um, behind those. I think a lot, I see a lot where they have like their social channel looks one way and then their ads look another way. Um, 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 gonna be it's not just oh you're in town so you're a brick and mortar like b2b company like you don't less people are seeing your visual store your your in-person stuff you're moving online to the world wide 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 um i love that because it's so it's so interesting because hearing you say that

and thinking about what i hear out of business people and things that I read, e-commerce is no longer a differentiator. And I think a lot of businesses are still in that mindset of, yeah, but we're going to have our stuff online now. Like, nodding. Look, they want acceptance that that's differentiating them. We've seen 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. Thinking back to them like, yeah, sure. All right, gumballs. Wow. Yeah, wow. Okay. Really differentiated. You can and yeah. Wow. Yeah, wow. Okay.

Really differentiated. You can sell online. Okay. I could be selling T-shirts in five minutes on Shopify. So, again, thinking about what I would almost drill down that to online Omnichannel. So forever we thought of Omnichannel as 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 life example one of the key trends we talk 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 went with this at the 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. 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 disc disconnection of all of these parts is so apparent because i even like five years ago working with a brand i won't even name how just disparate these parts well that's what the online team you know like like the brand team but that's the online team we're talking about the digital team like i'm the brand team digital team like how is this it's the same company it's the same company we're at the same place so we're selling the same what's the goal here well we're trying to sell more of these

well and what are you trying to do we're trying to get more service contract okay all right that's the goal these these all have to talk to each other yes and i think with covet exponentially increasing the online channels the expectation for those things to really live breathe and act together is going to be really important and i think you know i'm gonna say it now linear tv is d-e-a-d dead dead as a doornail and i'm just gonna 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 exclamation point trend there.

That should be a trend on its own, but I'm just saying. Because here's the deal, and I will say this. We were talking about what's changed. Even 18 months ago, I wouldn't have said that. Yeah. 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, linear TV is not being watched. 18 months ago, I was watching news in linear TV. I'm 43 years old, and I own 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 and I even you know hesitate sometimes to put any 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 um 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. Try to work on Instagram. It's not going to be the same.

That's exactly right. But 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, 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 more effect 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,

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 spin 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 going to just get a tee up. Number two, I put you on the spot for number one. Uh, and it, 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. 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 uh combined with how the interactivity within the content itself and but you finally got the platforms figuring it out i think you're gonna see you've got the shopify integration with tiktok i think tiktok I think you're going to see you've got the Shopify integration with TikTok. I think TikTok's ad 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'd even lump into this, you know, it's a really large category. Even lump into this, it's a really large category, but even the influencer marketing within social and the i see it double tripling easily being potentially 30 or more of the the overall uh 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 side hustlers. I see a lot of young college-age students doing this

where they're running businesses exclusively online, exclusively on social media. They won't even have a website. It'll be just Instagram where they can do the taggable 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 yeah when 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 yeah this is why the d2c 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 uh so maybe not a bus yeah but uh nonetheless it's just like oh let's it's so funny. We had James Gregson, who's with Lego, one of the creative directors, brilliant guy, talking. And he was even admitting for Lego getting that bus rolling, how slow it can be. They try to be on the advance of things, but it does stall innovation. Just the red tape that's involved with the larger brands and integrating some of these things while the d2c companies and the the quick on 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 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 the 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, you know, 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. trend or an observation or anything cookie-less yes so starting in 2022 google some of the other platforms apple and other have 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 uh 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, how the cookie crumbles, literally. It's crumbling.

The cookie is crumbling. It is crumbling. But the impact of this and really what it's doing today. So 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 on what we see coming out of that yeah so the cookie in its broadest form um 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, they, they're going to get you a fresh cookie. Um,

the cookie is really like really effective because when you, 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 add 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. Um, 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 to 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 um and keep in mind like what you're what you're searching is signaling the computers so it might not be guessing exactly what you're into but um 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 um to where it's just kind of an okay message of like, oh, we'll provide this service for you. And it's, 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,

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 if is it different from is it standing out from the feed um i don't think we're still kind of seeing how it's going to affect geographical targeting um i know facebook's really fighting that um because if we take away geographical targeting then only the massive um like 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 like 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 uh if i'm a company and today you know you place a pixel on your website that, again, tracks 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 will 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 gonna let you do um there is a lot of promise where there is a lot of like 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 like on facebook and instagram. Yeah. But I think a lot of the potentially a lot of the cross of like 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 till later and they're really kind of ambiguous on what's going to be

allowed and allowed and there's already some like beta testing of new like alternatives to the cookie um but it's kind of like up in the air of is there something that's going to be effective, develop fast enough, or are we going to lose everything altogether for the sake of, I guess, like, internet anonymity? Anonymity? Anonymity? I don't know. Anonymity. Anonymity. Anonymity.

Yeah, anonymity. I don't know. Anonymity. Anonymity. Yeah, anonymity. I don't know. Something like that. Not being able to know who's where on the interwebs. 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 everyone's stuff out there. But the relevancy of ads, it's going to get interesting in the next couple years. What I think happens is innovations, when these tech companies get their back against the wall, innovation seems to happen. 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. 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 rich get richer. But the bigger brands are better positioned 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 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 hand raiser, you've got to be collecting first party data so that you can re-market 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

what, 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 incentive to really get online and have website options that appeal to the internet as opposed to just your city or your location if you're a local person. 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 like making it memorable you kind of have to treat it as

being like your neighborhood mom and pop hangout spot of like they're gonna know like if you go in there regularly enough like they're gonna know your name they're gonna be able to call you if they like need something they'll ask for your input your feedback you're gonna be a loyal customer to them and you're going to build that relationship over time like you you kind of want to approach digital in a similar way of like you want to collect their information stay in touch with them um get the feedback because they're they're your customer like they're going to teach you a different perspective of like what they need for solutions like how you 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

um are like regularly like we're interacting and have the experience love it finally um we're gonna we're gonna trim this down to four key trends i think that's enough we got a lot of in-depth here let's talk about content changes you know trends you know content development um 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 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 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

with a lot of political movements a lot of like like social political stuff they were being very sinuous like sincere and they're 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 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 kind of 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 smell that out sooner or later um and 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 in 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 where it's like that prevents a lot of it prevents a lot of issues and it prevents a lot of like confusion and like misleads to even like in a practical sense of sales 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 be real you've got to have it all tied together and you'll win there's there's enough consumers and there's enough scale that if you do that you know like i think this these days of like i mean don't get me 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 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 post-modernism or they refer like there's all these concepts of like the new dada movement um it's like new sincerity it's just kind of this hyper honest like like they're kind of giving up on society it's kind of if you kind of do some i would recommend doing some googling on uh the original like um like dada movement and like

think about the i said it before um just absurd like absurdism Yes. Where it's just kind of like, like nothing matters, but to sum it up as like society doesn't matter. Like all this like separate brand entity kind of thing doesn't really, it's 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 and 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 yeah i think people who are really jumping into that wells like ryan reynolds if you look at his ads he's like he'll 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 kind of 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 um you've seen even att did that with like their latest ad

who used to do it used to be called word of mouth advertising like you've seen even att did that with like their latest ad it used to do it used to be called word of mouth advertising like have you seen the commercial with uh the girl that's been there ads last few years you know she's like i mean they're and it the ads 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 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 to 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 i don't care what your site 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 it's like this is who we are we're a bunch of people who know how to do this thing. We'll help you. We'll 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 um 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 mass and maybe it's less that linear 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 reaching it's you can you can drive up the frequency but it's perceived reach because uh unless it's and i know there's like night unless it'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 is only 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 influencers and all these things, and leaning into the realities of now instead of being scared of the realities now.

Because right now it could be scared as hell. Like, holy shit, we've got 37 channels that we could be marketing. And I even follow this sometimes. It's like, oh, God, we've got YouTube, we've got view we've got uh tiktok i mean like how all these channels lean into where your customers are yeah and 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. I live in the analytics side. I'm staring at numbers all day, But these are people viewing things and interacting. And your messaging needs to reflect that and your whole approach needs to. B to H. Business to human. Yes.

Yes. Humanity wins every time. 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 yeah and i think that's got to go throughout your content um in 2021 yeah absolutely mass marketing is dead mass marketing is dead there's room but there is room for you like just that's the thing that's what that's what people you know the the uh the boardroom gets scared hearing 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 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 they outsides now? Yeah, the outsides are now. My insights are now outsides. 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.rad.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 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 of all if you want to work with me directly if you want to get your business kicking ass and you want radical or myself involved, you can text me directly at 8 6 4 7 2 9 3 6 8 0.

Don't wait another minute. Let's get your business going. 8 6 4 7 2 9 36 80. We'll see you next time.