Ep. 143 – HOW ELECTION will Impact YOUR MARKETING! (key stats you need to know!) 😧 and CONSPIRACY THEORIES! | Jay’s Scoop

Welcome to do this not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

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If there's one topic I will never talk about on this podcast, it is politics. Because who cares what I think about any of that.

But what we do need to talk about is the huge impact that the upcoming presidential and other local elections are going to have as we approach November. Because it has a huge impact on marketing. And I want to get into some specifics of what is going to happen, what you should be thinking about.

And I think in general, marketers are sleeping a little bit on whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer. Marketers are sleeping on the impact that this election cycle is going to have.

We know from past presidential election cycles what the negative impact is on all marketing. Whether you're selling a direct to consumer sock brand or you're a B2B SaaS software company, it doesn't matter.

The reason that these big presidential election cycles hurt marketing is that there is so much noise leading up to the election.

We're all getting inundated with email and TV ads and radio and SMS and everything that what we do as humanity is we, we just kind of tune it all out a little bit. And when there is a contentious election, a close election, then the spending goes up that much more and we zone it out that much more.

So what do we exactly need to know related to all this? So first off, some information. Group M estimates that the political ad spend going into this election cycle is going to be as high as $16 billion.

That's a lot of good garbage that's going to be spent. So it gets all of our attention. Right? So the presidential election and a lot of local elections are going to be November 5th.

So what's going to happen is starting about six weeks prior to the election, so mid September, a lot of things are going to change. One thing that's going to change is going to be the cost of things.

So brand muscle came out and said paid social and paid search campaign costs, the cost to run those campaigns are going to rise anywhere from 15 to 50% because all the political ads, regardless of which party, it does not matter. Okay, all these political ads and pack Ads and all this stuff are they're going to try to get in front of everybody in every way possible.

So they're going to be buying up all the inventory, which is going to push the prices up higher. So the cost is going to go up.

But simultaneously, for us regular marketers who have nothing to do with the election, our performance is going to go down. So starting about six weeks out from the election, so mid September, we see email marketing open.

Rates for business and consumer emails start to drop about 2 to 3% each week as you get closer and closer to the election. Right? So the closer you are, the worst it's going to be. We also see email newsletter performance, how often people are opening, clicking, whatever.

So email newsletter click through rates drop by 25% one month out from the election. So that October newsletter you're sending out probably not going to do so great. Now why do we not have this on our radar?

Because we just think it's a regular year. It doesn't matter. That has nothing to do with us. We sell T shirts, we sell HR software. That's not how the world works, okay? We have one brain.

There's only so much garbage that we can consume. And when we get inundated by, we're like, forget it. I am gonna go watch repeats of Saved by the Bell. I can't handle this anymore.

And that's what we do. So what we really wanna keep an eye on is how much our marketing is being affected by some of the kind of speed bumps on the way to the election.

Right?

So the national conventions for each major party, the Republican national convention is July 15th through 18th, and then the Democratic National Convention is August 19th through 22nd. We don't think that that's going to have a huge impact.

But it's important for you to look at your marketing surrounding those events and to see if it does, because it's going to be a good indicator.

And then the second debate is going to be on September 10, which in and of itself is usually a bad period anyway, because marketing around September 11, never, never something you really want to be doing in a big way.

So that entire kind of five day period surrounding the September 10th and September 11th period, also because of September 11th itself, is probably something that you're going to want to avoid. Now one of the other things I think marketers are also sleeping on is do you know where your ads are actually running?

Meaning that let's say you're running retargeting ads, display retargeting ads online, and a lot of Times they're just running. And the way display retargeting ads work, they could run across hundreds, if not thousands of different websites.

But because you're targeting the person, you're not targeting a particular site. Well, as you head into an election cycle, you know, there could be a lot of news sites that have opinion articles and all sorts of editorials.

And you may or may not want your brand and your offer to be showing up as we head into this very contentious election next, any of that content, because it may be off brand message for you. So you really want to be very aware, starting in these next few weeks, planning and saying, oh, where exactly are ads running?

We need to make sure that our ad is not next to something that's, you know, really off of our brand message.

So as this all approaches, all this election nonsense, you basically have three options surrounding how you can handle your marketing around all this. One is, and I think this is horrendously stupid, you can go nuclear.

That's what I call it, which is you can jump into the mix and, and start talking about the politics in your marketing and whatever it is you all think about it, I think that is bananas because nobody cares about your opinion or your company's opinion and you're just going to get a lot of heat and you deserve it. So I don't like that option. Okay, Option number two is to avoid it altogether. Keep your head down, okay?

Market your stuff, keep saying it in your regular brand voice, navigate these hard dates and.

And also have yourself manage your expectation that your performance may be down slightly and make sure you manage that expectation internally and say, hello, this is going to be a crazy time. I think a lot of people will go with that option.

And then the third option, which you really have to think about, and it could do really, really well, but you have to pull it off the right way, which is to try to add some humor into your marketing as it relates to all this. So, for example, could you have email subject lines that said things like this escape election drama with. And then you put in your brand, right?

Or let's say you sent out an email, you had a social media post, or any type of marketing that said election free zone, colon, dive into whatever, right? Or how about too much politics, question mark, time for a distraction or even election drama getting old, question mark.

Here's your antidote so you can jump into the mix.

You're not saying you agree or disagree or like this or don't like that, and you can basically say, listen, we know that this all this stuff is annoying. So check us out instead. And you could do that. But in general, the whole theme here is the election's going to have an impact.

If you are not thinking about it, if it's not on your radar, if you're not planning around it, I think as a marketer, you are not doing what you need to be doing.

All right, before we get into, since you didn't ask, which will be related to this nonsense today that we talked about, and it is nonsense, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Listen, Marigold is the number one email sending platform on earth.

If you are a business marketer, if you're a consumer marketer, if you're sending out billions of emails or thousands of emails, if you're not, if you have not taken the time to, to check out Marigold, I don't think you're doing your job as a marketer because it is an incredible platform. It's what I use for the 6 billion emails I send out and take the time.

You can go to meet marigold.com it is a roll up of Cheetah Digital and campaign monitor and my Emma and Sail through. It is awesome. And if you want me to connect you directly with the most amazing people there, just DM me on LinkedIn.

Say, you know what, Jay, I'm finally ready to talk to Marigold. Hit me up and drop me a DM on LinkedIn and I will get you connected to the best people. So check out marigold@meetmaragold.com.

all right, let's get into. Since you didn't ask.

And when I started recording this, I was reminded of I have a buddy of mine that I actually do not like going out to dinner with because he's very annoying and he's like a conspiracy theorist. But his conspiracy theories that he spouts out are some of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

And he's the type of person, I don't know if you have this in your life.

There are people in my life that I've known forever that if I met them today, there's zero percent chance I'd be friends with them because they're just, they're just totally out there, Right?

But because there are certain people I know forever and they're like part of your life, you still get together with them because they're just not that many people that you still in contact with that you've known forever. So this dude's one of them. Thankfully, I know he does not listen to podcasts. So he's never going to hear this. So I could totally shred him.

But we were out to dinner the other night, and he brought up some of the most bizarre conspiracy theories that, like, there's no way that people actually think this, but. But they do. And that is so crazy. So. So one was he brought a few. One was he told me that. And he's being serious. He's not joking.

He told me that he thinks that birds are actually drones, that. That a significant number of birds are actually drones and that they're controlled by these Illuminati type organizations to monitor all of us.

I'm like, dude, what is. What is coming out of your mouth? And then he told me another one. That there is a plot to keep avocados expensive.

That there's some sort of, like, shadowy mystery group of avocado growers that are like, that get together and they plot to keep avocado prices expensive. I'm like, and if they do that, I. I think that's just a business move. I don't think that's a conspiracy theory.

I just think it's so crazy that anybody cares who cares about any of this. And then the other one that I thought was amazing, I left that dinner. I'm like, please, can I not talk to that person for like, two years from now?

The last one he said was that.

That he believes there's a conspiracy theory about all the airlines and them having very limited leg room and making it uncomfortable when you fly to try to get everybody to upgrade to first class. That they purposely all get together and they are like, no, we need to have as little legroom as possible so we get people to upgrade.

And it's like a big thing that they meet about. And I'm like, dude, I go home and I'm like, I wonder who's going to be voted off on the Bachelor. That's what I think about.

And people go home and they think about, like, avocado growers getting together to, like, manipulate the avocado market. My dude, I don't. I need to. Like, my brain just doesn't go there. Maybe it needs to. I am so simple minded. It's crazy.

Meanwhile, fast forward, probably turn around. All this stuff will be true. Oh, my God. Anyway, I don't know what we just talked about. We talked about avocados. I know that.

Listen, leave this thing a review. If you didn't hate it. I would actually really, genuinely appreciate it if you do. I see every review that gets left, and it means a lot to me.

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Nice. But the party's not over.

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