Ep 39 - What Works? Revisiting Marketing Revisiting Timing and Targeting
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Ep 39 - What Works? Revisiting Marketing Revisiting Timing and Targeting
Dave Dougherty: All right, welcome to the latest episode of Enterprising Minds. We have a good one for you because Alex and I have been kind of on the same wavelength without realizing it. As we talked about what we were going to talk about before the hitting record. So I think we will start with Alex and then we will broaden it out to my topic which is, If I was to start something today, would it be the same recommendations that I would make when I started my career?
So do you do paid search? Do you do display ads? Do you blog? Do you, you know, what's your approach to launching something? But Alex has a much more interesting example to start with. So I'll let you kick it off.
Alex's Marketing Example: Valvoline Email
Alex Pokorny: This is an odd one, but it's been on my brain for over a week now because it is oddly really good marketing and it suggests a whole lot behind it, which maybe I think how rare they are.
What's that? It's amazing how rare that is good. Yeah, it is. I mean, like, and this was like a random, you know, promotional email that I was looking at and I was like. Dang, this is actually solid. Like I'd like to replicate this and what it was. And it's just kind of a funny example. It's a very simple example as well.
It's Valvoline oil change, which there's a ton of these locations all over the place to do quick oil changes. And I was a customer there in the past. So they have my email address and they have a little bit of information about my vehicle and information about it. So they sent me this email on a Sunday that says, is Valvoline open on Sundays?
And the first line of the body copy says, yes, and this is your local location, including an address, not a clickable link should have been, they could do a little bit better there. But then also like the operating hours and that was it.
Breaking Down Effective Marketing Strategies
Alex Pokorny: And it was, it was surprisingly good marketing because if you, if I want to kind of tear this apart piece by piece of basically is how do you get to a point like this, what kind of elements does it have?
And then also what does this suggest and where can you kind of take this for other applications? So the first one basically is. In an instance of timing. So they knew the last time that I came into one of their shops, the particular location, because that's the, the address, the information or operating hours that they gave me, and they had an estimation on when I would return.
So that's a reorder. Anybody who, you know, repurchases your service, your product, you think about your churn rate, reducing that, this is that timing. And that's when this, you know, well timed email hit. It hit honestly on a Sunday, which is a little late on a Sunday, to be honest. So timing of actually the exact send of the week was a little off.
I would honestly say Saturday or, you know, Saturday, midday, or do it on Sunday or something like that, because you're planning out your weekend. Because I see this and then. It goes to this broader question of this inspiration for this idea. And that I think is a good piece that we can really kind of talk about too is where do ideas like this come from?
Where do you source these ideas? And then where do you apply these ideas? So my first thought from an SEO background, I was thinking, you know, answer the public. There's another one out there called answer Socrates. I just found that's free with no login, very similar system. Pulls in all these questions that are commonly asked at Google.
So you have a bunch of those. You don't necessarily have volume on it. It's, but they're common questions. I mean, good stuff for FAQ copy. Good stuff for a lot of different things, but maybe it's just Higher volumes of customers on the weekends or high on Saturday, low on Sunday, even though they have good operating hours, you know, something like that, they've noticed that trend.
So they want to kind of boost that up, but you could, you could take this from customer service calls and you can make an email out of a customer service call question, you know, someone calls you, that's probably one in 20 people who are actually going to pick up the phone and ask you a question, there's a good chance.
A lot of other people have that same question. What can you do with that? You know, that little nugget. Now that this little insight about your customer, you can make email copy could totally make search ad copy saying, you know, anybody that's searching for an oil change competitors, you name it is available.
You know, put on Sunday. Yes. Like your local location, check it out. You can target that. You can geo target stuff, of course, as well. Top of that. But this really could be any question. Any common question about your product or service, you could bring it up. And if it's very conversion focused like this was You time it with when somebody's going to do a reorder if it's not you can still make email copy out of it You can still make seo copy out of it.
You could still make social media copy out of it. I don't know like this gets into this bigger question of where do you source this information and then how do you integrate and It's a difficult question. I think it's constantly a difficult question. Realistically, you have all these different SMEs.
They're very, very good at the individual tasks that they do. But do they talk to each other? And the big question is, why would they talk to each other? And something like this would inspire that collaborative organization. So, you got that mix.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. And this is where one of those things, the first things that come to mind is the size of the organization knowing your business in and out.
And the advantages of.
Challenges in Marketing Automation
Dave Dougherty: Automation have always been the small to medium size organizations, right? All of the times that I've played with marketing automation, which I'm sure they inevitably used for your email. It really only works if the data is good and the only way the data is good is to have only a couple of people dealing with the data and where I think really large organizations fall down is just having so many things siloed.
You know, or the, the 20, 000 meetings you have on roles and responsibilities instead of just doing a thing, you know, like this is an old reference, but you know, the pretty woman movie where she's in the store and it's like, I have money.
Alex Pokorny: I have money.
Dave Dougherty: It's like, just let me do a thing. I know how to do it.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, I was thinking about that, even with like a GSC keyword database or something and I was like, okay, we could create a database like that. We could chop it up by, you know, department division business. However, your company is, you know, segmented up or broken up product line, right? And I could send it to these different groups.
And I was thinking, well, no, that's actually a really bad idea because basically once I start segmenting this stuff up, Everybody's going to go off and run off and go do their own random thing. And that will likely overlap with others, and it would make more sense to keep it together, more focused, and then say, okay, here's how to basically implement these pieces, pulling these groups, basically ad hoc, or just give them free reign to the whole database and see what happens.
I'm a big fan of that option, too, because Give it a shot and try to get some activity and some excitement around it. See some value out of it and other people will replicate it too. And then you can make something out of it versus spending a whole bunch of time prepping something that may never happen.
Dave Dougherty: Right, right. Yeah. Well, and I don't know if this is just a Minnesota thing, but the fact that we don't have car sales on a Sunday makes me think that this question could be a very regional. Issue, you know, whereas that you're busy, you, you don't think too much about it. You just know, generally car plus Sunday equals no, like, you know, so it's like, okay, if I can't get the oil change or the, or if I can't get my car in the shop at the dealer on Sundays, because they're closed.
You know, that is a perfect market to target. With that Sunday communication, again, listening to the way you described it, you see 20, 000 blogs on best time to post a social best time to, you know, do an email. It's like, well, it's not 8 AM on Monday. Cause that's when everybody else is doing it. It really depends on who you're trying to hit.
And if it, if you have segmented the local audience to address a particular need, or as we've talked about in previous things, the job to be done,
Alex Pokorny: right?
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, Saturday morning would be the perfect time to send that, that email out. Because you're reminding them that, oh yeah, I got to do that, I said I would do that.
And it's available. Right? Yep. So, yeah, because segmenting is so easy to go too niche.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, yeah. And there are so many complications with that. I mean, there's not only overlap, which can easily happen within one large company or one even smaller company that you can think that you're hitting separate audiences, but really, when it gets down to it may have an in your mind main primary persona, who's an end user.
But the original researcher, purchaser, owner, accountant, who knows who's also involved in that, that becomes very, very broad and wide very quickly, which can easily overlap with others as well. So that you can have conflicted messaging or just constantly just internal competition for the same customer, which happens when you have different databases, and you don't know it.
Dave Dougherty: Well, and this is, this goes to a larger thing that I've been thinking about too recently, where with all the comments on.
The Role of AI in Content Creation
Dave Dougherty: AI and productivity gains and all the things that you can do with AI now. It's like, okay, great. We can do content at scale, but why, because the broader you go, the less differentiated you are in order to be differentiated.
You can't do things at scale. In order to be rememberable, you can't do things at scale. Yeah. You know, and for like 15 years, we've heard the phrase, the riches are in the, the niches, right? Like you can't do that at scale either. So, I mean, that's one of the things that I've always had. I've struggled with the idea of like programmatic SEO, like that makes sense for travel companies.
You know, where you're doing the really broad, whatever, but
I don't, I don't see why you really need, why you really need that for any other given thing. Like you can't. Stand out. You can't differentiate on a service or making it easy on things because it's just undifferentiated crap on yeah. Automated landing pages. It just feels emotionless. Much like the complaints of the outputs of, you know
Exploring Programmatic SEO
Alex Pokorny: We should explain quick programmatic SEO.
I think that's a term that's been thrown around, but probably not too broadly. But at least the example you gave, like with the travel companies, there's some of them produce articles on like 10 best places to visit in Cape Cod, 10 best places to visit in Brighton. And then they did it all the way down to like the smallest towns ever.
And they still did 10 best places to visit and all these other ones. So that meant that basically you search activities in whatever city and these travel companies would pop up with an article and a guide and try to throw their name in there. So it, I don't know, it's kind of like a, you know, 80, kind of rule too, that pops in here.
I don't know. I was looking at there was a recent report from June saying that Google's Global search dominance is up to like 91. 1 percent now it's crazily large to the point where we've had discussions in our last like month, probably about minor search engines and basically like, how much do we really want to spend on Microsoft and Bing?
How much do we really want to Push into any other one. I mean, China is an interesting location because of Baidu, but with the exception of China, Baidu, Microsoft is such a small percentage. It becomes this very quick question of do we think we're going to get it returned for the Mount effort? And I think the same thing goes to your point about the programmatic SEO, the at scale.
Content generation, you're going to throw on tons of content for what, like, maybe you're down to like, you've, you think you've optimized everything else and you're like, yeah, we just need that one more percent because that tiny little town gets searched. 10 times a month, maybe, and we'll get clicked on once a month, and we'll convert one of those a year.
I mean, like, the numbers just fall apart, man, like, And then you're gonna put through how much effort to build out all that stuff, like, and make sure that it looks You know, at least not be destroying your brand as a result, like junk stuff.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Well, and I think too, it, it, it totally depends on, on the business that you're into. Right. And this goes to my larger question that I've been thinking about recently is the, what would be the marketing mix I would use today if I was starting something.
The Importance of Diversified Marketing
Dave Dougherty: Right. Because when you and I started out, you know, 15 years ago it was largely create a blog.
Become that topic, that topical authority, right. Do a bunch of ads to support the content that you've created promoted on organic social. Cause that existed at the time. Right. Got you something. Right. And you know, you were in the top 5 percent of creators or, you know, businesses, if you had a subscribe to our email thing, because you actually thought of, Hey, I need to have the relationship, right?
Like
Alex Pokorny: everybody's ruined on one platform and then was shocked whenever there was a major change. I think that was one of the other ones that I'm hearing less. Maybe it's just because I've been involved more with larger corporations and enterprises, but I'm hearing less about people who are, You know, I got tanked because man, Facebook made an algorithm change or man, Instagram made another algorithm change.
And suddenly I've like nothing for traffic because they had gone all in on one platform. It seems like today like people used to be all in on Google and man, the little tiny algorithm change and something, it's like people's businesses would disappear.
Dave Dougherty: Oh, it's still, that's still definitely a thing. Yeah, I mean, I was listening to,
Alex Pokorny: Yeah,
Dave Dougherty: I mean, I was, so I was listening to a economics podcast where they were revisiting It was the anniversary of the Indian government banning TikTok and what happened in the four years after that.
Largely everybody switched to either local options, but mostly it was Instagram and YouTube. Sure. But it was an interesting exploration of that and the exact phrase that you said was one of the exact things that this clothes clothes shop owner said was. Oh my God. I have nothing. I only did Tik TOK. I didn't think of Instagram or YouTube or any of these other things.
Right. So then no more Tik TOK. She had to start over and start posting. On those channels. And now now she's fine. You learn about
Alex Pokorny: platforms, but difficult to start from scratch again.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a pain in the butt for sure, but also just like investing, you want to be diversified.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
The Shift to Digital and Social Media
Alex Pokorny: I think that's, that could say a certain point too, because like, again, 15 years back there was, everybody's always too busy for good marketing.
I think I can make that just as like a, A template to put that like on my desk somewhere, because that hasn't changed. Yeah, but like that many years ago, it was the pain of building out a site and updating it and adding content and all the rest was huge. It was, I need somebody who knows how to do this stuff.
WordPress was amazing. And the fact that that was for one somebody who felt that some, some technical confidence could actually maybe pull this off, but they still had bugs they run into and need help. Things, of course, have changed with Squarespace. And I mean, honestly, a lot of people don't even have sites anymore.
They just use a social media landing page of some sort and work off of that for a small business. That, that difficulty, I think, has now spread into that platform mix where you do a little bit here, but you're, you're supposed to also be here and you're supposed to also have a listing here and supposed to keep this content updated here.
But you're also like trying to run a pizza shop. Like my gosh,
Dave Dougherty: right. Right. Well, and the rise of the zero clicks, right. I'm seeing a lot of content, at least in my feeds of you really, if you're going to be on social, you need to be thinking of zero click. Like, what is the what is the strategy that you have to keep them on that platform in hopes that they, Recognize recognize you and are willing to search for you later,
Alex Pokorny: which
Dave Dougherty: that is such a long term investment in things.
Alex Pokorny: I think that's such a problem with small businesses is like the concept even of attribution is just. So hard. Oh, it's just you've mentioned dealerships. I was in this meeting once. It was a local car dealership chain and this guy was talking about demanding on our paid search results of like, I don't know if this is actually doing anything for this.
What I do know is every weekend I see some guy walk in here. He's got the classifieds tucked under his arm and he circled one of our ads. So I know that's working. Like to know what newspaper subscription levels are like, like you, you want to go all in on print. Like, and even, I think it was Ford at that time was forcing all partner dealers to spend, I think it was up to like a third or something like that of their provided marketing funds on digital because they're trying to basically shift your dealerships towards that concept of digital.
That actually wasn't that long ago too. So that's just amazing how like reticent some of these groups are. However, I also understand the small business plight when you see This email come in and saying tons of people search for your Google search location, your Google maps location. Okay. You got lots of views on your Instagram post.
Okay. Are these things the same? No. One of them asked for directions to your shop. The other one viewed something that you had posted. These are two different activities that also might be the same person. Like the concept of attribution and then the zero click aspect of it. That is so difficult. Honestly, it's difficult for corporations to figure out.
I don't know. And then that gets down to the, this piece of. What is going to make the difference? Where should I spend my time and money?
Dave Dougherty: Well, I will say the one thing, at least for me, that is a positive is. When we started out there was very much that be everywhere all the time at once.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah,
Dave Dougherty: right. So you would you would tweet a Thing out and then just use something, you know, something like buffer or hootsuite to you know, broadcast it everywhere Yep.
Alex Pokorny: Yep.
Dave Dougherty: Now at least I do think it's alright You're familiar with LinkedIn. You're familiar with Tik Tok. You're familiar with whatever channel you are actively on every day. Start there.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. And it's like, I mean, I guess the earlier question would be, where's your customer at? But, and then, yeah, from there, start there and just start pushing it on it.
I was talking about somebody this week, just about like targetable audiences and they're saying, well, on LinkedIn, I can see that there's so many people in this particular role is on LinkedIn. It's like, okay, it doesn't mean they're searching in this particular week that you've decided your ad campaign is going to run.
Right. Those are two different things. Right. So
Dave Dougherty: are you familiar with With Mountain, the Ryan Reynolds service or whatever.
Alex Pokorny: No.
Dave Dougherty: Okay, so it's we just, for clarity, we have zero relationship with these guys. Never used it, you don't have a personal friendship
Alex Pokorny: with Ryan Reynolds?
Dave Dougherty: Not yet. Not yet. Reach out.
Reach
Alex Pokorny: out. Dave's looking for some new friends. You know.
Dave Dougherty: Reach out. No. I'm not even in the same league. You kidding? I'm like a Minnesota 7, like maybe, maybe a Hollywood 3.
Alex Pokorny: No, no, but he stands next to you and you like shoot up the ranks like so hard. Top of the world, man. I'll just make him look better because of
Dave Dougherty: the way I look.
Alex Pokorny: No,
Dave Dougherty: but the I'm, I'm intrigued by this particular service, not just because they're, you know, you talk about good marketing, look at the stuff that this company has been doing. It is. Wonderful. What they're doing. And their ability to react quickly and produce ads and, and copy on topics that are related are amazing.
Targeting Audiences with Streaming Ads
Dave Dougherty: But the, the service, if you're unfamiliar, it's mountain, it essentially it advertising on the, like the streaming apps. So Roku TV, fire, Amazon fire. And so you're not necessarily, it's. Not necessarily TV advertising, but it is. And what you end up seeing is a lot of people who are doing video, YouTube ads, and I'll end up doing this over the box, you know, TV advertising as well.
And with how I was thinking the other day of just how niche so many of the Programs are now, like that, that seems to be an opportunity that not a lot of companies or people are exploring even smaller businesses. Like if you're I mean, yeah, you, you have home designers and rebuilders in Alabama with their own show and then in Texas and then in New York and then in like pick a state.
Right. Or you even have the international house hunters and blah, blah, blah. Like I don't watch a lot of TV, but I know these, I know these shows exist. You know, it's like, okay, that to me is an interesting thing because you can. You can estimate and set up some tests fairly simply based on they like watching home renovations or they like watching international travel.
We should target them. Like, I feel like that Is the opportunity that like display ads on Facebook was 10 years ago.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. These are basically segmenting up that audience looking for interests, a second graphic targeting, so interest based targeting, and then trying to figure out where is that population and where can we get, basically pay for some of their attention.
Yeah, no, that's a, that's a good point. It's funny, actually mounted because I was like, I remember the name. It sponsored a marketing podcast. I listened to. And I remember the name mountain, but I remember nothing about the company. All right. Sorry, Martin. I swear I heard it a dozen times, but it didn't really didn't really stick with me.
Dave Dougherty: Right. Well, they didn't email you on Saturday with what you needed to know.
Email Marketing Insights
Alex Pokorny: Like when I care, please send me email when I don't care. Please don't send me email. Thank you.
Dave Dougherty: Well, yeah, absolutely. You know,
Alex Pokorny: and
Dave Dougherty: that I think that's the interesting thing, too, is, you know, when we look at the things at scale, right?
Email is one of those things that doesn't scale nicely, but there isn't a whole lot of churn, right? If you sign up for something, you pretty much let it sit in your inbox or you open it, right? Like the oil change place serves a direct need that you have every five to 7, 000 miles or whatever you end up.
Right. However you treat your car.
Alex Pokorny: Not well, so longer. Hence, this is probably the second or third email they've sent me, but yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. But you know, you have the relationship, you're not necessarily going to delete it. Because when you need them, you want that coupon,
Alex Pokorny: right? Right. I want to search in my inbox while I'm literally sitting in line waiting before I pull up.
Right. And that's the moment that I pull up my phone and find them. Yeah. I guess it's open rates. I mean, unsubscribers versus open rates there. I mean, even that email, funny enough, before this podcast is when I actually opened it because with my Gmail app, I had enough of a preview that said, is Valvoline open on Sundays?
The answer is yes. And it was like, That's perfect. Honestly, that's all the information I needed. I would get that. And they optimized for the channel then. It worked. I mean, getting straight down to the answer, giving me exactly the information that I needed. I didn't click open, but I did read it. Which is an interesting case.
So still to your point of not unsubscribing, but still consuming.
Dave Dougherty: And I think I, the reason I ask about the marketing mix thing now is
The Power of Sports Team Loyalty
Dave Dougherty: well, so my son is really into, to basketball. And so I've been going to a lot of basketball games and watching a lot of basketball. You can see I've got the, you know, the Timberwolves shirt on today. And, you know, when it comes to an audience and interest based targeting and there's like no better business than a sports team, if you're a billionaire and can buy a team,
but because by default, you go to whatever team is in your home state,
like, you know, hometown pride. Like, especially, I find it fascinating if you look at a team like Denver Broncos. Why do you have such fierce Broncos fans? And my hypothesis is that because almost everyone in Colorado is from somewhere else. The football team is one of the few things that can bring everybody together under a common identity and then they leave the stadium and it's back to, you know, back to reality.
But for that three hours, right? Yeah, you're a Broncos fan. There's not a lot of other businesses that are, that are like that, right? Cause you're not going to buy a t shirt of your oil change company. You're not going to, you know, you might buy a t shirt of your larger employer only because you have to show up occasionally in company swag, right?
Like, but for the most part, no, you're not going to, to willingly do that and rep the brand. For free.
Alex Pokorny: Minnesota wild. Yep. Last time I see the game. Long time. Do I still wear the swag? Absolutely. Would I wear it in public? Absolutely. Would I wear some random company's logo? Probably not.
Dave Dougherty: And the the reason I bring this up is I just, I've been thinking of that model, how it's like, that is so nice because you've already captured A large part of your audience. So your marketing really honestly is conversion rate optimization and just keeping in front of them, keeping them engaged.
That's it. You know? Now granted there's a lull in the summer because you just got done with 82 games and you're probably burnt out. Especially if your team did horribly. But ours didn't. So there's that. You need that break.
Marketing Strategies and Challenges
Dave Dougherty: But in looking at like LinkedIn, one of the things that I get burnt out on is that platform in particular, after a while, I, you know, I follow different thought leaders that you see doing the rounds on the different different stages who have, or have the followings or are generating the followings, the up and comers, but it's largely the same content.
It's just their particular perspective on. The same thing, and you can definitely tell the people who want to become those things because it's like, it's just so much. I, I'm the smartest guy in the room or the smartest girl in the room and blah, blah, blah. And like, I just get so tired of that, you know, but if you're optimizing for that particular channel, what's the alternative?
Yeah.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. That, I mean, sorry, this just hits like any kind of product marketing cycle. You get the same question of, of do you try something new or do you try the tried and true because you know, it'll be, it'll be small lift, but it's. It'll be worth something. I was just relating the story. I knew someone who was a buyer for a target and she bought seasonal products.
So Christmas brought
Dave Dougherty: job in
Alex Pokorny: the entire company. I mean, it was tough and it I have a million questions for her because how do you predict what the hot Halloween costume is gonna be two years from now? Right. And she said actually Christmas Tree Stylist is one of the hardest ones, which I amazingly those change.
I didn't realize that I, I don't know, green or long time ago. Right. Yeah, I know. I, I, I pretty sure evergreens are popular. I don't know. Yeah. enjoy less popular maple trees not so big. But yeah, so she said, well, basically we can figure out what series are coming up, what sequels are coming up. And we bet hard on those sequels.
And if you look at kids, Halloween costumes, they are heavily the top major brands. The same brands from two years ago are still present today. Why? Cause that's when they put in the order in the bottom. There's a long leg time, lead time to all these things, to the internal promotion of the products that they have in store to the distribution of them.
I mean, not even talking about the manufacturing, you know, timeline and shipping timeline to get all those crates over, like it's a long time. So that becomes this question of like, do you try to do tried and true sort of thing, or do you try to break through the mold? And I think every product life cycle or, I mean, service or influencer, you struggle with that same question of how do you break through it to try to gain that rapid growth, the viral growth, or do you just try to, you know, climb the mountain?
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, I've been having a bunch of conversations recently, actually around a similar topic of, you know, if you have big budgets, does that allow you to be sloppy? My answer is yes, typically pretty much because you can afford to just throw a ton of crap content at people and pay for frequency, you know, but if you don't have the budget for a lot of ads, but you still need to sell your 150 widgets or, you know, thousand widgets a month, what do you do?
What do you invest in? Is it the blogging because you have time? Is it the videos because you have a cell phone and somebody in the company that has a particular set of knowledge that they could easily talk about it? Or do you just create a whole bunch of emails and try to figure out which one works with your sales team?
Like, or is it all the above? Right? Like,
Effective Time Management Tips
Alex Pokorny: I think it's, I mean, if I were to give the advice, One, to any business owner, marketing is complex and it can be overwhelming. So I would break up the year. With basically kind of two month segments, the first month is basically trying to learn and develop and set up whatever system you need for that particular activity.
So, let's say you're really going to get into your maps, listings, two months, basically get ahold of the email addresses that you need, the locations, figure out basically what it takes to verify and get on that stuff. Google can take up to 30 days if you have to do a video verification anyways. So there's your first month is set up.
And learning about top 10 tips and just cap it at that. You don't really have to go too far into it, especially if you've never done anything on the platform and this is your first foray. You don't need a whole lot of information to start. You can always optimize and change in the future. Month two.
Implementation basically get into it connected to whatever systems like your Google Analytics or whatever you need to set up, get it done, basically get those things set up. And if there's an evergreen posting schedule, that's between month 1 and month 2, depending on the platform you've chosen and start to come up with the content month 2 is basically implement the content and publish and stick with an evergreen strategy and then take a break from it.
Shift over to the next one, basically kind of keep moving and keep trying some new different things at the end of the year, take some time to kind of reflect back on it and say, okay, one of this honestly was a drag to do, and it's too hard because you're not going to keep it up. You're not going to keep up a daily tick tock posting schedule.
If you think it's a horrendous activity, like, it's, it's not kind of, that's not realistic. Nobody does a blog every week. No one ever has. I don't think has ever stuck with that for a long period of time, or if they did, they're very, very rare. And then. The other piece about that is basically from an attribution standpoint, what do you think actually was meaningful?
And of these different activities, what felt like it was actually doing something and then keep on going until you have a good idea. But you got to take some breaks in this stuff too, because the never ending deluge of content that you can get from different influencers is astounding. I mean, all the people who say, Oh, you should be doing this, you should be doing this.
I mean, if I took the advice of every lifestyle influencer and said, Oh, you. You just need 15 minutes a day to do the stretches and you just need 15 minutes a day, twice a day to do the meditation. And you also need to remind yourself every five minutes to be, you know, in the moment. And you also need to spend 30 minutes every morning journaling and an hour and a half every night journaling.
And then you also need to be good. It's like, my gosh, okay, where's the rest of my day? Like you can't take all that advice in. You have to also for your own sanity, segment it up and break it up.
Dave Dougherty: So as part of my job, one of the things that I like to do is be involved in the mentoring programs. And I had this conversation with the person that is my mentee. Recently of I can tell you what's worked well for me. I can introduce you to concepts around the things that you are interested in. You have to do the work though.
You have to figure out what's going to work for you. So of course I thought of you, Alex, and I brought up the Pomodoro method and I said, personally, it gives me anxiety, but be aware of the concepts, see if it works for you. You know, and go, go from there, right?
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. And I think it's it's also a method that I'll use on occasion when either it's an overwhelming amount of different tasks that I have and trying to just break it up and start to stay focused on those different items, or it's a task that I'm having difficulty starting or a whole set of them that have been, you know, sitting on the, kind of the back burner, end of the to do list for a while, it's a great way to kind of clean up that list on a Friday or something like that, so.
Yeah, even writing down a whole to do list. I know, heck, my wife always talks about it, like, gives her anxiety to, like, write down the whole list of, like, everything that's, like, things to do. And to me, it's like, okay, it's finally on a list. I can finally, like, start to work on it, like, manage it. Right. At least
Dave Dougherty: it's on paper.
It's not being like held inside as this like
Alex Pokorny: perpetual, remember, remember,
Dave Dougherty: remember, yeah, exactly. Which in and of itself is exhausting, but yeah, yeah, I mean, you have to go in and you have to play and that's how you develop good marketing. That's how you develop good habits. That's how you develop good.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. For your mentee. So you're saying about Pomodoro versus other kind of. Things you're just saying, like the variety of different concepts that they could kind of take off on.
Dealing with Overwhelm and Burnout
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, it was it was a question of, you know, dealing with overwhelm and dealing with the idea that like, no matter what you like, try to do, it doesn't feel like you're getting things done.
So part of it was. Yeah. Get it on paper or a whiteboard or Kanban board or however you decide to do it. I have my preferences. And. Make sure that you stop and you give yourself credit for what you've already done. So those are my first two things, right? Because it's so easy just to go and next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing, right?
But if you go next thing, next thing, next thing, you go, Hey, all right. I already accomplished three things today. You know, now you're in a much better headspace. Cause yeah, I've already done some stuff. I can keep going. Yeah. Or it's been a hell of a week. I've accomplished three things. I'm going to go for a walk,
Alex Pokorny: you know, I heard a funny psych one once.
That was make your bed every morning. Even if it's like, you just throw the blanket over a little bit and you call that making your bed. The idea was basically start your day always with accomplishment. So you basically kind of keep that rolling it's emptied in the past. And then I found that it is useful.
I mean, not necessarily bad activity, but just like you get something done right away and you think of yourself as more as like, I'm getting things done. So you're more eager for that next task versus more resistant to it.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. I mean, I, I know what they're trying to get at with that, but for, for me, I have.
So very little brain power every morning that I get up and I do the exact same thing in the exact same order so that I know that I did them, because if I don't, I don't know that I did them. Still
Alex Pokorny: haven't fully woken up yet.
Dave Dougherty: So then it gets to be like, you know, lunchtime and I'm like, did I brush my teeth today?
I don't, you know. So, yeah, I definitely did because it's number two on the list, like, you know but that's what, that's what works for me.
Alex Pokorny: And yeah, yeah, it, one, I mean, speaking of the overwhelm, I mean, there's a gratitude element, some other kind of pieces like that, too, of like trying to reduce the overall stress that a lot of tasks can create, even though.
Each one of them individually isn't probably worth all the anxiety, but then cumulative has that effect. I think that's one of the, that's really where that burnout, that overwhelm kind of hits is when you are feeling like the collective pressure. I was thinking of it as like a bunch of like lit matches, one individually, not a big deal.
You put 10 of them together and. That's a fire and that's something you now need to deal with in a different way. That, that overwhelm, I think is when that stuff really starts to stack up. It's hard to say no, it's hard to push back on projects, especially if you're early in your career. It's really hard to do that or new to a role.
You don't want to do that. You want to show off, you know, you want to show that you're the hard worker, the one who can accomplish things and all the rest. It's difficult though. There's the phrase written down on my wall next to me. The urgent is rarely important and the important is rarely urgent.
That plays true of so many of those little, like, fire tasks of like, Oh no, we gotta do this! And it's like, probably not. Let's be honest. And then the other one Will this be important in 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 weeks, 10 years? Most things fall apart too, or embarrassing mistakes. You know, you sent a reply all to the entire company.
Yeah. 10 days. It's going to be annoying. 10 weeks. They'll be forgotten. 10 years. You'll laugh about it. Like not really a big deal, to be honest. Scary in the moment, horrible in the moment. Like first 10 minutes are awful, but it won't matter pretty soon and nobody will remember it.
Funny Anecdotes and Final Thoughts
Alex Pokorny: So I'm going.
Dave Dougherty: And it's, so my, my son is very shy.
And or can be and which is appropriate for his age. Right. But I looked at him the other day and I said, the secret to most things in life is that nobody really cares as much of what's going on with you as you think it is, because everybody else is too focused on themselves. And you, when I said that to him, you could see a light switch go off, like in his head, which is like, wait, what, really?
Like, yeah. How often do you think of this friend or that friend or this friend? Like how often do they think of that? You know, themselves all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's the same thing. Early career. Like. Yeah, you want to do a good job, but like, don't, yeah, don't kill yourself.
Alex Pokorny: My favorite psych study with that was there's a college student example where they have this guy with a really loud, obnoxious, unusual for the individual t shirt and they have to wear the shirt.
They walk into class, they go take the class, they leave. And there's a survey that basically goes out from an entire class, including this individual of how many people noticed your shirt. And. The person wearing the shirt thinks everybody noticed and everybody else has no clue it even happened.
Basically, it's a really easy study, especially because it's college students to repeat it over and over again. And it doesn't change. Basically people really don't. Notice other people. There really are very self observant, very focused on themselves and what they're doing, what they're next doing, what their problems and challenges are.
Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: I will say the flip side of that there was I'm not one to lose a bet. So in high school I had the long hair, I had the long beard I had, you know, I was very much like big Lebowski vibe. Gotcha. And. I was in the orchestra class and one of the percussionists said, all right, I will give you a hundred dollars.
If you show up in a bathrobe, like big Lebowski, I said, okay, have the money ready on the last day. Right. Cause he never said when so the very last day to your point, timing is very important for that noticing piece because I showed up late on purpose. And I walk in, I've got the white, you know, undershirt, gym shorts, sandals, Blue bathrobe.
I'm holding a glass of iced coffee, but it looks like a white Russian,
Alex Pokorny: right? Very Lebowski. Right. So you got it down to a T.
Dave Dougherty: Got it. Down to a T. And I throw open the door. Yep. And the entire orchestra sees me perfectly framed in the door. And. The class starts laughing and I look at my teacher who I had a great relationship with and he just hangs his head and shakes his head and the only thing he said was, that explains a lot of
Alex Pokorny: things.
I can imagine the teacher being like, am I going to do anything about this? No
Alright, let's keep going. .
Dave Dougherty: You know, so yeah, yeah, timing. Timing and context are also important. But yeah, I was thinking
Alex Pokorny: because if you had said that you slipped in with the crowd or as everybody's getting their instruments ready or something like that, and you made it into the back row where percussion is, maybe the three people around you would giggle and notice, and beyond that.
They're not going to turn around in their chair because they're focused on the instrument, the music in front of them, the fact that it didn't practice and whatever the conductor is doing.
Dave Dougherty: So that was a really good school day. Cause a, I got to wear a robe B, I walked out with a hundred dollars or that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Anyway, so this went far off from From what we originally started talking about, but fun, nonetheless. Thank you for hanging out with us. Thank you for listening.
Please like, subscribe, share, and, you know, hit that, that email link that we have in the description. Let us know what you think. Any anything that resonates with you or any good examples of good marketing you've seen recently as we've said before, it seems sad that it's so few and far between but They do exist.
They do exist. So thank you. And we will see you in the next episode of enterprise. And let's take care.
