SPECIAL SERIES == 💀 Templates Are Killing Your Marketing 🚫 <== | BATHROOM Break #67 COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That

Daniel Murray: Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break, that extra 10 Minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both, but I

Jay Schwedelson: don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is gonna be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay sch Wetson from the Do This Not That podcast@subjectline.com.

Jay Schwedelson: Each episode in this series, we are gonna go over quick tips about different marketing topics, and if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back for the bathroom break. I'm here with Daniel Murray from the Marketing of Millennials, and I'm Jay Wetson from Do This, not that we're gonna be talking about templates today, if they're good, bad social media, email, you name it.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, but before we do that, along those lines, Daniel, when you. Like find a shirt that you like, like, oh, I just wanna buy this new shirt from Lululemon. Do you just get a bunch of the same shirt and then you rock that as if it's like a template in your marketing? Or are you, you like to have a mixed bag in your, in your closet?

Jay Schwedelson: Um, mixed

Daniel Murray: bag. Mixed bag. I, I don't have the, I probably have like, probably like two or three of that shirt, but not like I, my closet's, different colors, different.

Jay Schwedelson: Style is different. It's not the same guy. Oh, I'm the exact opposite. Uh, if I find a shirt that I like and, and Allie is not, it's so annoying.

Jay Schwedelson: Like I'll just get like a bunch of even the same color, which makes no sense. Like I have three long sleeve black aloe shirts and Oh, those are

Daniel Murray: the best though. Yeah. They're

Jay Schwedelson: so comfortable. I'm

Daniel Murray: wearing aloe right now. Yeah, yeah. It's

Jay Schwedelson: the best. And then she's like, that's, you can't wear that all the time.

Jay Schwedelson: That's ridiculous. I'm like, but, but why? So you're down on templates as a human.

Daniel Murray: Yes, I'm down. They do make things easier, but there's reasons why not.

Jay Schwedelson: All right. Fair enough. All right, let's get into the episode here. Templates, uh, every company, business, consumer, whatever. You're like, oh, we gotta mix it up.

Jay Schwedelson: We need new templates. Let's go into our email sending platform. Let's go on Canva, let's go here, there, wherever. And we get a template. And then we start using the template, um, because why We think it looks nicer, it looks so slick. It's what got it checks all the boxes for best practices. Daniel, is this the way that we should be doing it?

Jay Schwedelson: Should we should be using templates that are out there available to us?

Daniel Murray: My quick answer is no, because. Everybody's doing that. Like you in marketing, you don't wanna do what everybody's doing. And I, I feel like we templates 10 years ago were different than like, like using templates 10 user go is different than using it now.

Daniel Murray: 'cause it's like there's a lot of different ways to do it in a cheap way to get better templates. So I think. If you want to blend in. And also I think subconsciously as humans, we turn tune out templates. Like if you scroll your link, your LinkedIn feed, your Instagram, if you see a Canva templated like scroll through, you kind of tune that out.

Daniel Murray: Um, the other thing I think it really limits for me is like. Personalization of your brand. Like your brand has some sort of voice, some sort of tone, and the template is template to like the most common denominator, and you don't want to be the most common denominator when you're sending out. Emails are doing

Jay Schwedelson: social

Daniel Murray: posts.

Jay Schwedelson: I totally agree, and I think one of the biggest problem with templates in general, regardless of the media, social media, email, doesn't matter. Here's what happens in your organization. You're like, oh, we need to, we need to freshen up our thing. And okay, and, and you get a template from wherever and you use it, and here's what happens.

Jay Schwedelson: It does really well. Oh, our newsletter did so much better, or we got so much more engagement on the social posts with this new template. The template is amazing. Wrong. What happened was you did something. New, right? You mixed it up. You did something that stood out for the first time. It's this idea of confirmation bias that you think because it worked, that you should double down on it.

Jay Schwedelson: And then you roll with that for the next six months and then you wind up in the gutter again with horrible performance. So it's not a matter of, uh, you pick the world's greatest template. That's why its better. It did better 'cause you mixed it up and that's the key thing. You gotta mix it up.

Daniel Murray: I will add what I am anti is canned templates, like ones that the platform serves to you.

Daniel Murray: Like I think if you can own a, like an email style with flexibility, like, but if you can own a template that are your brand colors, like your, like how you do it. Like with newsletters, I feel like you have to show up consistently to look the same because. You have to, but I will never, would, would never for a newsletter pull out the newsletter template in Pardot, for example.

Daniel Murray: I would not go, I would make my own custom newsletter template that fits my brand, fits my vibe, fits what I'm trying to do, this newsletter, and if it does. If I wanna do something different, I'll build a new section in that newsletter. Like, like I could change up the template and make it different. But I'm talking about like using canned templates that everybody's using when they not developing your own template.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, and it's also not just actual templates, it's copying. What everybody does. So for example, if I said to you, in your mind right now, maybe you're walking, maybe you're driving, maybe whatever. I want you to imagine what a email promotion for a webinar looks like. Doesn't matter the company or the topic.

Jay Schwedelson: What it probably looks like in your head is two circles of people's faces that nobody knows who they really are except for their moms. Okay? Some boring headline and like a blue background. And that is what every webinar promo looks like, whether it's on social media or email, whatever. And that's not a template, that's a format that everyone just copies, and that's what you want to get away from.

Jay Schwedelson: Also, you wanna stop the scroll on social media, in email, whatever it is. And if you're just copying everybody else's playbook, it is a recipe to nowheresville.

Daniel Murray: I'll, I'll add on that. I mean, having a template on social media, for example, like right now we're in a age where like non polished things work. So like, for example, J does this really well with your emails and you can do this as any brand is like do a non-tech, uh, a text-based email instead of a template email.

Daniel Murray: Like you don't have to have. All your promotions, emails don't need to be a certain email template. You could do a promotions email that looks like it came from the founder. It looks like it came from the head of marketing. Looks like it came from someone in the company. It doesn't have to be templates, same as social like things that are a template style are not gonna work as well as like.

Daniel Murray: Someone talking to a camera or something, someone like that. Templates is just a way to get started for a lot of people. So if you're doing nothing, it's better than doing nothing but do more if you're trying to stand out and be different.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright, super random question, uh, before we wrap up. This is the most bizarre thing.

Jay Schwedelson: So me and Daniel actually are recording in front of each other live right now, and Daniel's wearing glasses. What is your take on the AI glasses, like the meta glasses? Do you want to get a pair of glasses that you could ask random questions to? Or is that not something that you ever wanna do?

Daniel Murray: It's, it, I, I, I think what I want to eventually do is like, I feel like the, what will be cool is like glass, is that if someone's speaking another language, like translates in front of you or like analyzes your environment, you know, like the spy movies where it's like, oh, this is it.

Daniel Murray: Like you can analyze your like

Jay Schwedelson: Iron Man.

Daniel Murray: Yeah. So I think that, but I think there's a, it's a couple years away to that, but I wear contacts and glasses, so if I can get mine better in any way, I am down to do that.

Jay Schwedelson: I think it'd be cool you just walking around and be like, Hey, hey, uh, what's, uh, the weather gonna be in two hours?

Jay Schwedelson: I don't know. So, uh, you should, you should rock those glasses. Uh, all right. I don't know what we talked about as usual, but, uh, templates suck, but this podcast doesn't. So leave Daniel a review at the marketing millennials or leave me a review it. Do this, not that. We'll check you at the next one later.

Jay Schwedelson: Daniel, come on man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. Alright, while he's still in there, this is Jay. Check out my podcast. Do this, not that for marketers. Each week we share. Really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing, and I hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out

Daniel Murray: back from my bathroom break.

Daniel Murray: This is Daniel. Go follow the Marketing Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out, and it could be anything from email subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a, a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear.

Daniel Murray: Peace out later.