Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 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. 

The notion of social live stream selling has 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, 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 the steering wheel. Oh, yeah. Like 19 or 2004. You'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 year. I know. I'm glad to have you on the show finally.

Yeah, finally. I know. You don't like me or something? Crushing it, I know. I've been invited. You don't even say that. True, you have. You're going, Ray, you got to come on. We got to do it.

Damn job gets in the way sometimes. I mean, being busy. It's a crazy thing i know so uh i'm excited you know we do this we've been doing this it's our third or fourth edition uh obviously the audience has grown and changed um thanking all the audience out there i just saw our numbers today we're officially top 90 on apple business marketing podcasts and uh we remain the top 30 on spotify love that i know so we appreciate all the loyal listeners we hope we uh give you both some entertainment and some education here on our 2022 trends you know before we jump in um i'm just gonna completely put you on the spot right right? And I, you know, but no, I mean, what do you think of 2021 overall? I don't want to talk too much.

I want to, 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 interruption with the ios update and having to learn how to navigate that um and i would say also chaos but chaos in a good way with the nfts and 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 it's you've had to, I don't want to say definitely there's been a component with Facebook that you 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.

Right. A couple of years ago that I think, 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, 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 gonna talk a little bit about that when we get into 2022. As much as I think of myself, our name, our agency name is Radical, I think of myself as progressive. But I'm a practical person when it comes to marketing and the implications because I'm kind of an action guy. And other than buying some personal NFTs for investment or some crypto for investment, there's not action that I can take either from one of my own brands or the clients that we serve. Right. You know,

I can't, I can't act upon NFTs. I mean, you could for bigger brands that have deeper pockets, but for this medium sized 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

yeah um 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, then damn it. I mean, who knows what metaverse will win. Right, right. But we'll see. Let's kick off 2022 talk here. And really, you know, you do it. We joked before the 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 2022 planning and all that so it's certainly the foreseeable future for, you know, where 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 and a Tik TOK video world. And the, the, the big players in the game, Facebook, they've all said it, they've all come out and said it to our face. So it's like how much clearer they can, they get.

That's where we're heading. That's where they're going to start. I mean, promoting that's, they're going to put some boosting behind it they won't say that but they'll 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 with our trends and we were kind of pre-planning i call it add america um because with the it's both the functionality of the apps, the swiping fast nature of the UI combined with our fleeting attention span. And whether you physically are on Adderall or not, or whatever, it's still, we're all a bit ADD. You know, our interest in trends is fleeting. Our interest in the videos is like, get to the point, Jack. And I think to your point, via TikTok, Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels,

even LinkedIn is coming out with short form video, which we'll get to. You know, you're seeing, I kind of made this statement that short-form 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. 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, boom, boom, like frenetic. I think you're going to see some of that in the longer form video, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. And I also think on TikTok specifically, I think the 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 tick tock videos are going to become more entertaining and the fact that they're going to be entertaining with a purpose yep um 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 tick tock the questions now

becoming have you seen this tick to? Whether then are you on TikTok? That's right. Because that kind of was the question, especially the beginning of this year's. Are you on TikTok? Right. You stick out growing. Yeah. Yeah. Now it's like, but have you seen this? 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, you're entertaining.

Right. And if you're doing media, you're educating, you're 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. Yeah. So you've got to play that entertainment or edutainment game or you're getting swiped faster than 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 2022 is with the ad game. 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 hadn'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. I think for them it's going to be really big because that's going to help maybe. But I do think brand placement within the natural form, it's going to play a more branding medium perhaps. I think once they get the Shopify linkage and the shopping,

no matter what your e-commerce platform is, once they get products like loading your product catalog into it and all that that once they figure all that out certainly 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 um cool well i'm gonna 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 in this but 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 for all the middle-aged women out there that 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 you could they got to know the host they got to know the they 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 the whoever the founder was right on stage with the personalities and so you're seeing a lot of that um with the brands that are doing well this year

with live selling you know they sell out of stuff there's that scarcity 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 it's so 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's 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 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 is it's. 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 my back room and i'd have

live selling going on three times a week absolutely and you know 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 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 our 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 nailed it with the b2b i think it does cross the gamut of personalization and what even with influence or just some things bringing them in there's just so many ways to bring it in it doesn't your live selling or promotion or sharing doesn't have to take place within your physical building. Right. 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, that's where we're going to keep, we're 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, 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'll be interesting to see, and we've already seen a little bit of this, but then 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 of 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 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 as a brand? 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, 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- 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 um i think we're going to see this has already kind of been proliferation but i think

you know email marketing is this is not some prognostication the marketing's dying i still am a huge fan of email marketing right uh 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. I really get annoyed with 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 taken 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 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 um 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 they want 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 um and because of and i think you know instagram at least does

this well some of the others are starting to do it better. It's 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, on 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 a hundred DMs a day and I look at almost every one 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

there's 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 going, 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 of view so why are you emailing them what 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 PM because this program says is the best time you actually look at that person as a human and say, what 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's,

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 rates, like 80%, right. That's probably going to go down over time as we, as us marketers start to junk up everybody's inbox. Right. But, but it is like astounding. Email open rates, like, you know, you're great if it's like five or 6%. Yeah.

And now SMS is clouding it. But, but look, it's all about relevant message, right person, right message. Absolutely. If you're relevant, they've opted in, they've 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 them 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, 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 is 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 to change.

I do think that there'll be different, um, ad types that they'll roll out next year. I think one buzzword that everybody's talking about right now is the metaverse. Yep. Um, I, 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 medium clients.

So no, I think you're a hundred percent right. I think it's one of those that, you know, brands that we work with and brands that we the metaverse not necessarily this medium clients so no i think you're 100 right i think 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 you're not with pepsi or pizza hut or you know insert larger brand here i 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 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 right now for what you need to do because a lot of this is going to play out because you don't know the who's going to kind of be the lead metaverse right yeah at some point

because it's blockchain they should all connect connect yep 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 and vr and ar and all that the answer is probably yes but what's the 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? 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. 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 as used as much as it was expected. Yes.

So that's that's's similar. What I feel about metaverse 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. So funny. You bring up voice. 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, their trend list for this year. Right. And someone, I'm sure, has it on their 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 two.

We have an Alexa and Google, but both of them are only used to listen to Blippi or whatever my daughters want to listen to. That's really all it's for us, at least. I mean, I'm sure. Mine is 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 the 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 the steering wheel. Oh, yeah. 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 gonna dm me invariably and go

well you know it wasn't interconnected right you know shit sherlock but send it to me i'll take care of it like but like yeah but it's like we've been talking voice for 20 years right like and then now it is all interconnected and yes i do some things with the voice but i'm not voice searching internet right at all right and i feel like i am on i i may not be on the compared to my friends i'm on the cutting edge you know right 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 again but you haven't gone hey siri internet look up uh how to play monopoly or whatever you know like

whatever we do 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 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 yeah order four five rolls of toilet paper for my six hundred fifty thousand dollar yacht that i just bought on the metaverse yeah yeah my head just was to a to a dark place literally and figuratively of uh the metaverse what all we do there well joe and i joked about uh getting catfish in the

dating metaverse i mean how how will you know you'll never know you'll never know because uh the future's ahead of us all make believe anyway right uh cool well i do have a couple more the the i do think linkedin's taking shape um 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 long has come out um you've got live events you've got short form videos supposedly launching any day you've got video im 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 and jobs.

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. Um, and I think that's at least for, for my age, we did use it for jobs and now it's become more curated, curated content be that we can look, 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, that's going to be big. And I think, you know, as much as, you know, I didn't even want to, 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 learn 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. 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 from a cost standpoint. I still believe in that human interaction, but not for everything. 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 bottle. I think you could 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 right you can draw a broader crowd yep and i would be at those two in-person ones i would be collecting and people already are first person data left and right yeah that would be kind of my goal for that is 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 frisbees you give away uh my last thing um on my list is you know when i'm calling back to the past is you know i get on the soapbox a lot it's kind of like one of those things i'm a long-term guy in a short-term world and you know i believe in playing the long game as it relates to brand and other things like that um but i think also the world that we live in and the nature of where, you know, 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 the fingers. If you had a decent product, I'm not saying you had trash or something,

but compared to what it is now. 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. Even that universe is smaller than it needs to be. You've got to play the brand game where you've got to raise awareness and have a drumbeat of getting people to know and understand your brand. Because if you're not known,

people buy 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 just every other day, 2,200 e-commerce businesses popping up. 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 IV. 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 geo-targeting 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 you're 100% right. I think it is a brand building. is a storytelling people are people that want to we're skeptical by nature yep 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 like 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 yeah 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 checkout line, and I'm like, damn, I've been going to these meetings, I've been wondering about my breath stinking, 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 forums website okay right you know that happens but you probably don't want that t-shirt this year yeah i know hey have a fan thick thick and thin brother go dogs oh sorry you're a year you can have your year well hey beep bam on saturday

oh god yeah and by the time you're anyone's listening to this you'll already have known and we'll see if uh and the dogs gets over the hump they think if you can't get over the hump this year we're not going yeah you guys are so due whatever but yeah i i mean yeah i mean even going 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 and 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 here meet the founder who's going to talk about it you know jim you know i 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 uh but oh look now so they're 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 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 and not three seconds.

Right. And I think at the end of the day, we can talk about the new 2022, 2022. 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 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 20 32 52 those principles are always going to be the same yep 100 not every every product is going to be a viral tiktok product which everybody wants it to be, but then would it be viral? And, you know, large brands can sustain underinvestment because of the awareness they've built over time.

If you're a small to medium 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. Short-term doesn't last. 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. universe from 2010 to 2018 19 you had this moment in time where you could kind of play the digital marketing game and 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 you're gonna have these organic moments right you're gonna have these moments if you could be a first mover on tiktok yeah you know and you could just get a skyrocket you know but like some of those first moves on skyrocket they skyrocket for eight months right and then they fizzle yep you know it runs out and maybe they made two million dollars 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 in one way or another you're going to have to play the game of long-term branding always always it's the name of the game for sure cool man any final thoughts no i'm interested to see what 2022 brings yeah um i think that like i said i think the chaos is gonna i probably am wrong on that but i think it's gonna calm down a little bit but yeah i hope so i hope so i appreciate you absolutely appreciate you cool guys we really appreciate you. Absolutely. I appreciate you. Cool, guys. We really appreciate you listening today. You know where to find us. We're at theradcast.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 theradicalformula.com. Andy Murphy and I are going to do brain and brand engineering, a 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 Alford on all platforms. We'll see you next time on the Radcast.