In this episode of "Do This, Not That," host Jay Schwedelson discusses the unique marketing opportunities available during the end-of-year period, focusing on both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) strategies. He provides numerous statistics to highlight the effectiveness of various marketing tactics during this time and offers specific content ideas and promotional strategies for marketers to leverage.

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Best Moments:

(00:40) Introduction to the special marketing opportunities in Q4

(01:53) Statistics on B2B content engagement during October-December

(03:45) Effective B2B offers for the end of the year

(05:26) Consumer-focused marketing strategies for Q4

(07:07) Discussion of the "New Year, New You" content offer

(08:12) Introduction of the Marigold Brand Rankings Report

(09:36) "Since You Didn't Ask" segment discussing popular TV shows

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MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!

Marigold is a relationship marketing platform designed to help you acquire new customers and turn them into superfans with their best-in-class loyalty solutions. Don’t take my word for it though, American Airlines, Honeybaked Ham, Title Boxing, and Notre Dame University are also customers!

Regardless of your size, check out Marigold today to get the solution you need to grow your business!

Check out this free content from marigold that Jay has loved digesting, 5 Steps For Selecting The Right Email Marketing Platform.

Foreign.

Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers.

You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid.

Also dig into life, pop culture and the chaos that is our everyday.

I'm Jay Schwedelson.

Let's do this, not that.

We are back for do this, not that, presented by Marigold.

And we are going to lock in today and we're going to talk about the super special time of year that is approaching for both business and consumer marketers.

And no, we're not going to be talking about Black Friday or Cyber Monday or any of that stuff.

But this time of year, there are certain content offers that you can be doing.

There are certain promotions that you could be doing, both business and consumer.

And we're going to break them down because these offers and these promotions do better at this time of year than any offers do at any other time of year.

And we want to get into specifically which ones.

Listen, in general, we need to take advantage of of the vibe that starts as we're into this fourth quarter, which is this new year is going to be my year.

This is the year my business is going to do whatever.

This is the year I'm going to get healthier.

This is the year I'm going to do whatever.

And the offers and the promotions that we build around all of that business and consumer can drive massive engagement.

So first I want to break down on the business to business side.

What are the offers and things and all that stuff.

But before I do that, let me give you some stats.

I want to rattle off a ton of stats on the business side to really drive home the point that this time of the year is it.

So this one's from Content Marketing Institute Business to business.

Content downloads rise 26% between October and December.

This one's from World Data Research.

Year end titled webinars see a 22% higher attendance rate because they're focused on learning and strategy for the upcoming year.

Okay, surveys.

This is from Survey Monkey.

Okay.

End of year surveys between October and December have a 28% higher response rate.

This all makes sense, right?

This is what you see at the end of the year.

How about this one?

Another one.

I'm giving you these all for a reason because I want you to realize it's not just one stat.

It is just a laundry list of these stats that are driving home this idea of what are the offers.

And we're going to go into exactly what those offers are.

Another one from Gartner, end of year offers tied to budget planning drive 29% more leads, particularly in IT marketing and finance sector.

And this last one from HubSpot, free trials and product demo offers in Q4 convert and at a 27% higher rate than those that are offered earlier in the year.

Oh, I know, that was a ton of stats.

You're like, maybe you're driving or you're walking, like, dude, I can't consume this.

This podcast is annoying and that's totally fair.

But I want you to see and hear that this is not just one source that's telling you that this period is really important.

It's a boatload of them, right?

So now I want to go over the exact offers.

Then we're going to do consumer in a second.

I want to go over the exact offers that work so well this time of year all the way to the end of the calendar year.

The first and best one are industry specific calendars.

Okay?

That is this downloadable piece of content, okay.

And you make it industry specific.

It can be something that includes industry events on it.

It can include, maybe there are new laws or regulations are getting enacted on certain dates.

And then besides, for all the industry information that you could put on the calendar, you then could put on the calendar stuff related to your brand and your company.

Maybe these are the times that we're having webinars or this is when we're doing product releases.

But calendars, everybody loves calendars.

And when they're industry specific, like, ooh, I'm in the retail sector, I'm in the healthcare industry.

I'm going to download this because now I'm going to have it set for the year.

I don't need to think about anything.

It's an incredible offer to do.

Some other business offers that do so well are new year planning kits.

Right?

I would download that.

It could be anything.

And a great offer in general for business marketers is lock in current year pricing.

That is the go to offer between now and end of year it crushes it.

Okay, let's talk about the consumer side.

All right.

What works really well, of course, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

I'm not talking about that.

You don't need me to tell you to run a Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer.

I mean seriously.

But what other stuff works between now and the end of the year?

That's not just that.

A few things.

First of all, year end VIP loyalty reward type stuff, right?

Offer exclusive year end bonuses or special awards to your loyal customers, like double points or it's a thank you offer for being such a great customer and part of our community all year long.

This creates that sense of exclusivity, right?

And it rewards people.

And it's not holiday focused.

Not everything is.

This is our biggest discount of the year.

This is a great time to acknowledge the what they've done with you all year long.

It's an easy way to do loyalty marketing.

Another one on the consumer side that's not holiday related.

That does incredibly well.

Is anything related to like a preview.

So there's this really cool stat.

Emails that promote preview sneak peek early access for upcoming year from October through December have a 38% higher average email open rate than standard offers that are not holiday focused.

Now there's one offer that applies to both business and consumer marketers that I absolutely hate and that works so well.

And the reason that's really important to talk about is there are going to be things that you personally think are terrible, right, that would that you don't even want them to work because they're so cringy to you, you can't take it.

But that's why you have to test things.

You can't just go with what you think.

And this is a great example of that because I hate this content offer but it's crushes it.

Okay, so it's this idea of New Year New.

You and Content Marketing Institute released this stat content focused on New Year New.

You can see up to a 40% increase in driving traffic to websites and engagement.

I can't take it when I hear New Year New you.

I don't know why that bothers me so much, but it crushes it on both the business and and consumer side.

And I get it, you're like I'm going to do better this year.

It's going to be amazing.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

All that stuff doesn't matter.

You can't always do just what you like.

That's the way life works.

All right, so before we get into since you didn't ask, which is the ridiculous portion of this podcast, I want to share with you that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold.

Now, I love talking about Marigold.

It's my email sending platform.

We send out billions of emails, business and consumer emails and.

But I'm not here to tell you how great their email sending platform is.

And if you want to find out about that, you could just go to meet marigold.com I strongly endorse their platform.

But no, I want to talk to you about a new piece of content that they just released, which I think is among the most interesting pieces of content I've seen in forever.

And it's free.

It is the Marigold brand rankings report.

And this is all about relationship marketing stuff.

Okay?

They literally break down 200 different mega brands and they then categorize in all these different buckets how good or not so good.

Maybe they're each of these brands are doing related to their relationship marketing efforts and they rank them all.

I mean, they're all doing good, but relatively speaking, who's doing the best, right?

And you get to see brand by brand by brand, who is crushing it and how and why specific to that brand.

If you want this report, all you gotta do is go to Jay Schwedelson.com Marigold that's Jay Schweddelson.com Marigold I am telling you, it is so interesting to see the breakdown of these 200 brands and what they're doing and how they're driving the relationship marketing.

So check that out.

All right, let's get into.

Since you didn't ask, you know what's crazy about this podcast and my newsletter?

I sent out everything.

I get emails from people, which is very, very nice.

I appreciate that.

But something's happened in the last, like week to two weeks, I've gotten more emails about one specific thing than I've ever gotten about anything.

And I've never even talked about it, which is so strange.

The what have I been getting emails about?

I've been getting emails about a TV show, the reality show the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

I've been getting flooded with people saying, you need to be watching the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

You're not talking about the most important show on tv.

You're You're a doofus.

So, I mean, not like one email.

I'm talking about a lot of emails.

All right, all right.

So I was like, I got some homework to do here.

So I said, fine, I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna look into the secret lives of Mormon wives.

And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, this show came out on Hulu recently, okay?

And it's a.

It's a.

It's a TV show about the lives of eight, like, mom influencers that before the show came out, they.

They started this thing called mom talk.

M o m t o k on TikTok.

And basically it was these Mormon women wives that would go on Tick tock and try to kind of bust the stereotype of.

Of Mormon women.

And they were doing, you know, dancing and influencer stuff and all this stuff.

All right?

And that's what's kind of the show's all based on.

And I gotta tell you, I've watched some crazy reality shows in my time.

I really have, but this one might be the wildest.

I mean, this show is wild.

I mean, they're talking about, like, swinging with each other.

And I mean, it is unhinged.

I'm about halfway through.

I don't know if I like it.

I'm disturbed.

But I am doing my homework.

I am watching.

So that's going on.

And then the other thing that's going on, of course, this week that got released is Love is Blind season seven.

Now, if you've never watched reality show in your life and you're like, no, I'll never watch one.

I'm telling you, the show that you want to watch is Love is Blind.

It's on Netflix.

This season just came out.

Okay, Now I encourage everybody who's listening here to go and watch Love is Blind season seven.

All right?

I'm very excited this got released, and that was useless information.

You all rock.

And if you didn't register for Google conference, it actually might be too late.

By the time this airs, we may have closed registration.

If not, I would stop listening.

Go to guruconference.com it is free.

It is virtual.

It's the world's largest email marketing, and we have 22,000 people going Sarah Jessica Parker.

A zillion other people are going to be there.

It is free as virtual.

I'm going to be there.

I hope you're going to be there.

You rock.

Keep it real.

You did it.

You made it to the end.

Nice.

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