Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This, Not That podcast. This is our episode where we're getting questions all week long, work questions, ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each, and if you want to submit a question, It's real easy. Just go to jschwedelson.com, and you can submit a question. There's a button that says podcast, another one that says ask us anything. And, yeah, we love getting the questions, so let's do it. The first question is from Ben from Miami. Oh, well, that's near me. I'm in Boca Raton. You know what I saw about Miami this week? You don't see the local news, but I do. There was a restaurant down there who, and I guess a lot of restaurants are doing this, that are making, not rules, but like guidelines for when a creator comes to their restaurant, how they want their staff to handle it like an influencer. Not even like a big influence. I get it if like, you know, I don't know, Kim Kardashian shows up, but just a regular like creator or something. They're giving them special seating near windows. This was all in this write-up, okay? And then they're alerting the kitchen. And then the person that's their waiter has to have a story ready to tell about the food more than just the regular reading of the specials. It was this whole thing. I don't know. So creators are now getting like the red carpet treatment. I guess that's how restaurants, you know, get traffic. Who might, whatever, who cares? All right, Ben, what is your question? Jay, we are pumping out more content than ever because we're using some AI tools to generate a ton of posts and new email formats too, but our engagement is actually dropping. Do you have any thoughts as to why if we are doing more, we are seeing less?" Yeah, well, that doesn't really surprise me at all because, you know, all these AI tools, and there's so many of them now, right? It's getting us to be more efficient and pump out more garbage but here the reality of it And we been testing a lot of stuff The things that whether you a business marketer consumer marketer nonprofit the lo which I talked about before but I have some specific new things to test The lo-fi kind of more authentic stuff is what's working. The polished AI garbage is just garbage. So for example, let me give you some specifics that you can test that we're seeing a serious lift on. So let's talk about case studies. Everybody who wants their case studies downloaded, But that doesn't really even work that well anymore because case studies are generic and boring. What's actually working, whether it's business, consumer, whatever, are screenshot testimonials. That format, if you could screenshot a testimonial and use that as the image in your social posts, in your emails, on your website, that is crushing. We actually did a head-to-head test on this, and we saw a 22% conversion lift when the testimonial was a screenshot as opposed to just a case study format. The craziest one that we've been testing, which is so wild, has to do with your call-to-action buttons, you know, the long rectangular things in your emails, on your landing pages, wherever you're getting people to click through. and it's this idea instead of saying download or register or buy now, it's this idea of the maybe call to action button. It's so weird. So what does that mean? If the call to action button, instead of setting the regular stuff, it says something like, let me see where you actually write L E M M E and then see, let me see. Or the button would say, fine, I'll look or show me the thing or would say, I guess, or we'll say, okay, what is this? This idea of the maybe call to action button. I know how bizarre that is, but it grabs your attention for a millisecond. And it's the most un-AI thing ever. And we actually tested this on a bunch of campaigns. And we actually saw this type of casual, maybe style call to action button. We got a 14% higher click-through rate when doing that versus a lot of the standard call to actions that we were using. And then one of the other things that we've been testing is webinar title format. Right now, of the best webinar title format that we have been seeing is instead of like doing a webinar title that would be something like you know strategies for blah blah blah something epically boring generic garbage if you have your webinar title starting with how we did blah blah how we did blah blah that is crushing it because all we want in general with the content that working out there is behind the scenes. That is really the thing that we want. And the one place we're seeing it more than anywhere else, the number one content format that is outperforming any polished educational content of any kind is day in the life content. If you're a boring manufacturer, if you are in a regulated industry like healthcare or financial services, if you are a nonprofit, I am telling you, day-in-the-life content crushes it. I don't care what industry you're in. Of course, if you're in a fun consumer industry, that's easy. Test this out. It is working so, so well. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We have a question from Kathy from Portland. Jay, we need you to settle some big debates. Are these things bad? Okay. She has four of them. Here we go. Is this bad? Rehearsing fake arguments in the shower. Well, I never really thought about that. I do that. I'm not even just fake arguments. I just, I find myself, I don't know if you all do this. I find myself actually knowing I'm going to have a certain conversation and I'll like almost talk it out in the shower. Is that weird? Maybe it's not weird because you asked the question. So I'm going to go with, no, that's not bad. And I never really thought about it, but I do that. Not the argument thing, but I do that. Okay. Next one. Is this bad? Reading restaurant menus before arriving. You know, I'm going to talk out of both sides of my mouth. I don't like doing that because it takes away from the experience of when you go to the restaurant. But I also like knowing if the restaurant has a good menu. So I do it sometimes, not always. I don't think it's bad, but I also think it makes your restaurant experience more boring. So I'm on the fence on that one. Okay. What about the next one? Is this bad? Saying we need rain like you're a farmer. Yeah, this actually bothers me. I don't like it when people say we need rain. I know that some areas have a drought and that's not okay for me to say. maybe because I'm in Florida and it rains all the time, but it does bother me when it raining out and I wanna go somewhere and says no no this is good We needed the rain I like who are you Like like are you like a meteorologist We needed the rain I know we all on one team on the planet and all that stuff. I don't know why that bothers me. It's fine. If you say it in your head, it just bothers me. All right. The last one, Jay, is this bad using a speakerphone in public? This is probably the worst thing of all time. Okay. It could not be more annoying. No one cares about your conversation. I don't even care about the conversations I'm in when I'm not on speakerphone. Nobody on earth should be on their speakerphone in public. If you do this, you stink. Don't do that. Good questions, Kathy. All right, everyone, I would appreciate something. Go to jschwedelson.com. There is a button that says partner. We are lining up our collabs. I want to help promote your brand. My agency does all sorts of cool marketing campaigns, business, consumer, everything on things like Reddit and email and direct mail and other social channels. All this stuff. Go to jschwedelson.com. Click the partner button. Let's do stuff. See you later. Wait, I have two huge things to share with you. First, I have a book coming out. Stupider people have done it. It's coming out the first week of June and all net author proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. This book might be terrible, but who cares? When you buy this thing on Amazon or anywhere else, you are gonna be helping to kick cancer's butt. Let's do that together. The second thing is you can go to jschwedelson.com. On the upper right-hand corner, there's this thing that says partner. My agency wants to help you. If you're a business marketer, consumer marketer, it doesn't make a difference. I want to help you drive net new sales, registrations, growth, change the design, all the stuff that you are doing. Hit me up there. Also, if you want to do brand collabs, I want to know about your brand. I want to help you amplify that message. Go to jschwedelson.com, click on partner. Let's do stuff together. And the last thing is leave this show a review if it wasn't the absolute worst podcast you've ever heard. And you're awesome for being here. Later. Thank you.
