3 Pieces of Marketing Advice for Every Business Owner l Ad Nerds Podcast

I don't even know why I bought these sneakers for probably a thousand dollars like that swoosh made me do it and Virgil apple and off-white made me do it it wasn't an ad I didn't see an ad it wasn't you know marketing it definitely wasn't sales garyvee finally welcome to the ad nerds podcast my friend it's so good to be here so let's Dive Right In Gary um if you're talking to a small business owner today what are three things that you would tell a small business owner right now that they should be doing in

their marketing organic social content specifically on Tick Tock LinkedIn YouTube Shorts Facebook reels um really thinking about starting to learn how to use AI you know really prompt engineering which means what do you enter into the all these AI apps to get good output so starting the journey like don't be crippled by what I just said I know that sounds complicated but this would be like I would it would be like me saying get on the Internet or start a Twitter account in 2006 for Twitter or 1999 eight seven for the internet like I don't

need you to be an AI expert but I definitely don't need you to put your head in the sand and not have ever touched an AI tool like mid-journey or even Bing has a really easy plug-in to make creative from it so that's number two and then number three doing what you're doing right now every business needs to have a core platform you know a show a podcast a a go-to social media Series so like everyone now is in the business of being a media company and then they happen to do something they happen to

be an agency they happen to sell flowers they happen to you know mow Lawns but like the quicker every small business understands that without them making creative acting like a publisher acting like a media company they're leaving growth and more importantly they're creating the opportunity for a competitor to do it and you know Google ads are not going to last forever just like the Yellow Pages didn't last forever like your sales team your reputation people always you know the amount of real estate agents that have hit me up in the last 10 years because I

used to always do this at conferences and be like hey I know you've been the queen of the town for 30 years but if you take this Facebook and Twitter and YouTube thing not seriously someone's going to come along and take your business the amount of people that have emailed me in the last three four five years in the real estate sector saying you were right like I I didn't take it serious I saw you at the Inman I saw you at the Tom Ferry thing I saw you on the internet you said that I

laughed at you because I had 22 years of market dominance but now this kid out of nowhere just by making tick tocks and YouTube videos has taken a lot of my business what do I do how do I close the gap and I'm like well now you're playing catch up and so those are the three things social media content like getting great at it number two tasting AI number three starting a show like whether it's a radio show like you had a video show or even like a written show even if you're writing articles on

on LinkedIn now you're acting like a newspaper which is a media company and that's fine too sure over the years you know you and I have talked about my passionate dislike for programmatic ad buying and but some small business owners have this belief that they think it's the cheapest way to build their brand what are your thoughts on this you know I think a lot of the programmatic stuff the inventory itself shows up very poorly as a banner ad or a pre-roll and isn't actually being consumed so I love the concept of programmatic like I

love using technology but my question always to a lot of my friends who and big companies that buy programmatic is where is it showing up and is it a good ad and did it work like I just you know I can you know it's very nice to have three dollar cpms but if that's on the bottom of lawnmowersdaily.com and it's like a banner ad at the bottom of a video that you made one video to work across the whole internet like you kind of get what you pay for sometimes in life and like if the

impressions are cheap there's probably a reality and like a lot of people aren't actually consuming it let alone no matter what the the data shows and so the reason I've always struggled with a lot of the programmatic inventories it's bad inventory you know you could pay three dollars a square foot for a retail location I have a good feeling that that's a really bad retail location yeah the price should say at all and plus you know the Integrity of your brand is at play too because you could be put on a site that you don't

want to be put on like a porn site or something yeah I'll be honest with you I'm not overly worried about that I think fear positioning isn't real like I'm less worried about showing up on a porn site like if someone's like you're on a porn site I'm like well why are you on the porn site like you know that's not super hard like I'm not overly worried about that but more work about did you spend money to make what you wanted to happen happen I for example you know spank I I often when I

do things for wine techs.com everyone should sign up or or be friends I'm usually buying things that are more expensive cpms because the premium nature of the cost indicates sometimes not but when I do my process of Common Sense looking at data it often indicates high value awareness like actually consumed information the only reason I love social media is because the ads are kind of integrated into the flow of consumption half the ads I'm consuming on social today I don't even realize is an ad in the first 10 seconds because people are getting better at

creative every ad I see on traditional internet and every ad I see on television I know is an ad right the minute you see it you're like they're trying to get me screwed the last like this weekend I like watched full pledge thinking it was just regular content like wait a minute they're selling the spaghetti strainer wait a minute this is a ketchup like people are like people are starting to catch on to like what I believe and that's exciting to see because [ __ ] that's the way I'd rather buy stuff I'd rather buy

it by being entertained or educated by the creative so I you know one of the things that I like to talk about are branding advertising and marketing I like to call it bam that you can thank Emerald Lagasse for that but it's like the trifecta of growth for businesses does one have more long-term value than the other in your eyes of course Brandt okay tell me why well because I don't even know why I bought these sneakers for probably a thousand dollars like that swoosh made me do it and Virgil apple and off-white made me

do it it wasn't an ad I didn't see an ad it wasn't you know marketing it definitely wasn't sales it was the brand brand is everything you know if you're doing sales it's only because you don't know how to do brand because once you do brand you don't need a sales team Gary can a business go all in on brand and build a successful healthy financially stable business by just focusing on brand 100 percent if it has a good product yes of course for sure I mean that's you know that's what we're seeing in a

lot of these social Brands right like you know Dollar Shave Club sold for a billion dollars on brand it was one viral video and then listen it's unfair for me to say yes because the reality is like everything's a mix like like if you had a viral video for your product on Tick Tock like it's still smart to convert that to a performance ad it's it's still smart that if you sold a million units of it to hire a sales team to get into stores like I you know it's funny I'm backtracking because I hate

the idea of All or Nothing But is it possible of course it's possible it's happening sure there's a lot of people who just do organic social do brand videos sometimes run ads sometimes just go on the algorithm of the of the creative and they grow to a certain point now usually they'll raise capital or they'll take their profits and then they'll start integrating marketing and sales but like you know brand is the Holy Grail that's why the biggest cup Coca-Cola and BMW and you know Nike they do brand for a reason if if they if

they thought that they could get more out of just sales they would do that right like you know and so there's a reason brand I mean like why we buy diamond rings it's all about an emotion it's brand yeah totally and that leads into the next question perfectly organic versus paid so many business owners think that they can only do organic and others think that paid is going to get them to the promised land what's your take where does the mix have to come in in today's algorithm-based world I think it needs to be great

you need to be great at organic and when things go viral or over index you turn them into paid that is the new model in my opinion in iOS 14.5 and how you know things changed I cooking and privacy eliminated a lot of the values of you know paid the way we knew it for a decade and then organic got way more important because algorithms now give you a million organic views if you put out a good video and so you know the reality is for me it's strategic organic content and then when things work

turning them into paid ads brand performance is how I think about it makes sense Gary finally if if garyvee had to start from scratch today in a 2023 environment how would he do it what would be the goal you're going to grow a brand new business let's say everything you have right now vaynermedia Vayner acts gone you start you're literally starting from zero what would you do how would you do it I would make unlimited content on the 10 social media platforms LinkedIn and YouTube shorts or vaynerx Instagram and Tick Tock be friends and wine

text you know I would just fully commit as many hours as possible to make content final this is important social media platforms give you free reach without them charging you think about this think about how you and I grew up I couldn't go to the New York Times and say I've got this great wine ad will you just place it because it's great people are always like oh the platforms [ __ ] the platforms are giving you unlimited free attention it's the number one commodity in the world foreign [Music]