In this episode of Do This, NOT That, Jay discusses how your marketing strategy and messaging should shift once October hits to maximize engagement and performance. He provides tips on optimizing content, email marketing, and promotions for the busy Q4 period through tactics like focusing on the upcoming year, leveraging seasonal and holiday-related keywords, and creating 2024 calendars.
As we enter October, Jay explains that consumers and business professionals become focused on Q4 and the new year ahead. Their interests and responsiveness shift away from the current year. Jay provides data showing how simply adding “2024” to your content and campaigns lead to a 25-30% boost in engagement. He outlines specific ways to update your marketing assets and messaging to capitalize on this seasonal change.
Main Discussion Points:
- Don’t rely on content and campaigns highlighting “2023” after October 1st – it will drag down engagement. Either remove the year entirely or shift to “2024.”
- For email subject lines, holiday and Christmas-related keywords see a 30% higher open rate when used in Q4.
- Calendars are the top performing content type starting in October through January – consider creating one tailored to your industry or audience.
- Some examples: local event calendars, industry conference calendars, small business tip calendars, email marketing best practice calendars.
- Calendars see 40% higher engagement over other content types during Q4.
Transcript
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. We'll 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 here.
It is do this, not that. You know, I get excited. I get excited. I always get excited.
Now, this episode is very important because we're going to talk about something that is going to radically change the performance of all of your marketing after the start of October.
Marketers don't realize that when the calendar flips and it is now October 1st and beyond, especially for October and November, okay, what consumers want to react to and respond to and what business professionals want to react to and respond to is completely different when you are in August and September whatnot. What do I mean by that and why does this matter? Okay, content. Let's say you are promoting content of some kind.
Let's say you have a tip sheet, or let's say you have a Trend sheet.
The seven hot HR trends for:sumer side, and we care about:content that is labeled with:Now, let's say you don't have:It is literally pulling you down. We actually see performance start to drop because it feels dated, it feels old. So you're better off with no name at all.
to consider doing is sticking:content that you have, stick:ack Friday. And you could use:Now, putting that aside, there is one piece of content that I don't care if you're a business marketer or you're a consumer marketer, that is the most consumed piece of content that does better than any other content type starting October 1st through mid January. And that is calendars. You're like, what? What is he actually talking about with a calendar? Okay, let me digest it. What does that even mean?
Let me digest this. That makes no sense. When you promote calendar content after October 1st, it has a 40% higher overall engagement rate than any other form of content.
What do I mean by calendar content? So you want to make a calendar. A calendar means a piece of content that people can download, that they can sign up for and get.
So on the business side, you can create an industry event calendar.
n industry event calendar for:And every year you're going to come out with this on October 1st. After October 1st, you're going to be the go to resource for the construction industry event calendar.
Could have webinars on there, other events on there, key dates on there, whatever it may be, right? And it could be anything. Or let's say you want to come out with in your community the local events calendar.
are all the local events for:You can make it fun on the consumer side, you could make it the fun facts calendar. Right? Oriental trading does A great job of this every year where they put all the dates of all the ridiculous fake holidays.
Today's pretzel day, today's cut your toenails day. I don't care what day it is. These calendars get consumed. Let's say you're targeting small business owners. The key small business owners dates.
Dates when you have to have your taxes filed or there's certain rebates that you can get from the small business association, whatever it may be. You can have an industry education calendar where all sorts of different book releases are coming out and other informational things are coming out.
Doesn't matter what industry you're in. It doesn't matter if you're a consumer marketer or a business marketer. You want to create a calendar.
My organization has a calendar we put out every year. It's an email marketing calendar. The best and worst days to send out email. It is our number one most consumed piece of content.
Every year we come out with it. So I don't care what industry you're in. This is a 40% increase in overall engagement just by putting out this content type.
And this is the time of year that it works. You can't play this game in May. Nobody wants a calendar in May. That's weird. They want a calendar now for next year.
And it goes well into early to mid January. So try out creating a calendar for whatever industry you're in. Okay. I'm always. I always get worked up every time I do these things.
Anyway, now we get to the segment of this podcast called since you didn't ask where I don't talk about anything business related or work related market. Just talk about whatever's on my mind. So what is actually on my mind? I'm gonna tell you what's on my mind. I'm gonna tell you. I am now knee deep.
You definitely don't care. Into Love is blind season five. This is on Netflix. This is a reality show. This show is fantastic.
There are those of you out there like, I'm not watching a reality show. And I'm telling you right now, this is the one to watch. And this season's better than any season. And this is where they have couples, right?
Not couples. They have like 10 men. They have like 10 women.
And they go into these little rooms separated by a wall and they can't see each other and they date and it's amazing. And they ultimately they get engaged and. And it's wild.
Okay, but let me tell you about the biggest fail when it comes to this reality show for me and I watch all the reality shows, the same thing happens and I ruin something for myself. So what happens is every time I start watching any reality show, Love is Blind, the Golden Bachelor, Bachelor and Paradis. Doesn't matter.
I do the same thing. I start watching and I see all the different people that are on the show and then I go on Instagram. This is true.
And I start to follow each person that is on the show, each person that's a contestant, whatever you call them, the bachelors, the single people. I follow them on Instagram like an idiot. I find each person. I follow, follow, follow, follow, follow. But here's the problem.
It's interesting to follow these people, you know, while the season's going on. Oh, what are they doing? Where are they eating? Who are they dating? I don't know. I find it interesting. But I've been doing this for like 15 years.
My Instagram is littered, literally. It's just full of people that were on reality shows seven years ago. I don't remember who they are. They're not famous.
Their lives are completely random and have fallen apart. I don't care about them, and yet I'm too lazy to unfollow them. So my entire Instagram feed is like E level. Not like even BC or D level.
Like E level celebrities that are trying to hold on to some version of fame from seven years ago in some reality dating show like Dating in the Dark or who knows what. And that's my Instagram feed. And you don't care. It's amazing. All right, I'll tell you what else you don't care about.
No, I hope you do care about this real quick. You know Guru Conference is coming up. That is the free virtual massive email event in November. We are running out of our virtual seats.
I want you to be there. Martha Stewart is speaking, I'm speaking. All sorts of people are speaking. It's two days. It's virtual. It's free. Guru conference.com please go.
I don't want you not to be able to go because we ran out of virtual seats because we only bought so many. So check out gurucomics.com thank you for listening to this podcast and you are awesome. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice.
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