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- [00:00]
A
What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Sweat Equity. Is this episode 50 or is this 49? We're almost there. 49. Almost 50. In the bag.
- [00:08]
B
Jumping the gun. We're so excited.
- [00:10]
A
Which is. Yeah, I am. But I thought we've been doing this technically for a year. No. Did we skip two episodes?
- [00:16]
B
I think we've scrapped some. Some pretty trash episodes because initially we were like a little. I mean, we were shy.
- [00:23]
A
We also. Oh, yeah, yeah, we had to rerecord one and then our last pod producer, one of our last pod producers just skipped an episode, remember?
- [00:32]
B
Oh, I certainly do.
- [00:34]
A
Yeah.
- [00:34]
B
Yeah.
- [00:36]
A
So I am curious, you. You post on your story that you have a Sweat Equity shoe giveaway. Oh, is this actually happening?
- [00:42]
B
I'm capping. I'm engaged, performing.
- [00:44]
A
Okay, fair, fair.
- [00:45]
B
I won't be giving away these shoes, but they're fire.
- [00:48]
A
So mine. I'm a. I'm kind of piggybacking off of your topic. Last week. We're working with a bunch of the brands on Black Friday stuff and some of the Black Friday strategy stuff. So implementing some of like the easy things brands can do leading up to Black Friday, that'll make a significant difference. I think there's. There's just so many things that people ignore and they don't take advantage of during, during this time. So I'm going to be touching on that and then kind of laying it out or laying out most of it within to a strategy and a timeline, et cetera, that people could execute against. What do you got?
- [01:19]
B
So I'm going to talk about a framework for finding, like, what to actually create on Instagram. We've started bringing on a lot of organic content clients and I feel like there's this challenge with where to even start. And so this is a way to kind of find those content pillars, some questions you can ask, and also just, you know, a pretty dialed in example of a brand that's crushing this heart and soil. We've talked about them before and I think what really has guided their ability to do that is that they were creator led, they were creator founded. So it's in their DNA. And so the purpose of this exercise is how do you get that into your DNA? How do you think like a creator as a brand? But I'm excited to hear about your Black Friday stuff because from everything we've done with brands over the last few years, it's like the biggest challenge is, is getting lost in the sea of everything that's being bombarded to consumers during that period. And I feel like you have a lot of interesting ideas for standing 100%.
- [02:19]
A
And I do want to dive into the creative part as well, or, like, kind of changing the framework of how does a brand act creator led? Because it's really just about conditioning the team, like, and it's a new thing, right? Like, especially so many brands that are rooted in legacy that it's hard or legacy mindsets, that it's very hard to break that mold. And it takes some conditioning. But. Okay, so for the Black Friday side, there's really three, three, six, like, seven things I'm thinking about and then, like, smaller things within there or within that entire essentially playbook that I want brands to focus on. So the first one is offers. We talked about this a little bit last time, but everything starts here. And then too, too many brands are inherently lazy when it comes to offers where they're just like, okay, it's going to be 30 off for the next four days. And that's. And it's like, there's so many brand that is where it's like the sea of sameness. And it's so easy to just zag when. When people are. Everybody's zigging. And so when I'm thinking about an offer, I want it to add one of three elements. Either urgency, scarcity, or exclusivity. Sometimes you can mix a few. And so I'll just give examples of different things that get people's wheels turning. So if we're doing an offer that's rooted in urgency, it's like, okay, well, Friday could be 40% off. Saturday could be 30% off. Sunday it could be 20% off. And Monday could be 10% off. Right? Or you could go, you know, you could go 40, 30, 20, 20, whatever it is. Like, or you could even reduce it by 5% every single time. Like, you just. The fact that is that you want to take advantage of it on. On Friday if you forgot to, because you were. You were taking advantage of other deals. Well, on Saturday, there's still a good deal, but on Saturday, by the end of Saturday, it's gone. And so you want to be able to leverage that urgency to, like, get people to take action. So much of Black Friday is impulse driven. The next one is exclusivity. So this is a more obvious one. But it's like, well, the waitlist can get early access. They could. They could get 50% off and they could get that Thursday. Now you could, like, the thing I like about that is you could literally start the sale early if the Black Friday obviously is on a Friday. You could start it on Thanksgiving, you could start it whenever by giving the waitlist early access and giving them an incentive to get that or to, you know, get that early Access, get that 50% off if the rest of the weekend is going to be 40% off. Any thoughts on offers there or what have you seen that worked well in the past, et cetera.
- [04:39]
B
I think the coolest one you talk about is the decreasing by day because when you put that in front of your audience that is already ready to support you. We've talked about creating the right segments in your post, not postscript in your SMS audience or in your email list, then it's a really great opportunity to actually activate those people early. And a lot of the time, man, cash flow during this time is not something that's talked about a lot. You are receiving so much cash at the back end of November that you're recouping from September and October periods which are a little bit slower. And so sometimes it's nice to get that money in the door early. And the best way to do that is the people who love and support your brand, you might not activate them on that first 50% off early access, but when that next day it drops down to 40, all of a sudden they're like, oh, they actually mean this. They mean that they're going to continue to go down. And if I wait another day it's 30, if I wait another day it's 20. And so that's a great way to drive purchase action and activate your existing list. And then at the end of it, if you culminate it with okay, and now here's our actual offer for everybody. It conditions the people that follow you that you mean what you say, which is the biggest challenge with Black Friday. In my opinion. Brands don't mean what they say. They're desperate for your purchase, they're desperate for revenue. And so that's not a really effective long term strategy.
- [06:06]
A
Yeah, a lot of brands lose integrity during Black Friday, no doubt, because it's like thirsty ass. Yeah. Friday through Sunday, last chance, last chance. And then it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, Tuesday, friends and family.
- [06:17]
B
Yeah, it's crazy relative.
- [06:18]
A
It's like it just, it gets out of hand.
- [06:20]
B
And I will say a lot of agency owners in particular will tell you that that is actually totally fine. And no one cares and no one remembers, man. I don't totally disagree with them, but I just want to tell people that consumers notice, you know, 100% even, even non marketers like us, like, people do pay attention. They get conditioned to believe certain things from brands recently.
- [06:43]
A
Like, and this isn't even during a time that I'm getting bombarded with sales emails, but I got hit with a sales email is friends and family. And it's like, what makes me friends and family. So next on the list is email and sms. You talked about this last time and you made a great point, which is like, you need a condition. Both the email and the SMS list before Black Friday. It's not just like it's here. And you hit them with all the sales emails. You have to get them ready to know that Black Friday's coming. Like you, you just have to prep them. And so the way I like to think about this, I mapped that out into four weeks. Um, you know, from four weeks out to one week out, what you should be doing, how many should you, how many emails and SMS or text should be, should you send. And so the way I broke it out is four weeks out, you should be sending one email, one sms, like just teasing the sale. And here I would like to leverage, if you have influencers in your roster, you have ambassadors, you have athletes, whatever it is. Like, I would like to leverage them within here, like within the imagery, not their actual. More so, yeah, within, within the imagery. Three weeks out, same thing. One email, one sms. Whole goal is to tease, but then also give a little bit more detail and start hyping up the sale, right? Like this is such a revenue driver, revenue driving weekend for brands. You can't neglect trying to con. You can't neglect conditioning the audience. Like you have to get them prepped and ready and lined up for, for the sale so that the entire time, like it's top of mind all of a sudden. Like when every brand goes on sale two weeks out, I am doing two emails and two SMS and then I'm hyping again. I'm now transitioning from teasing it to hyping it up and adding people to the waitlist slash. Early access, easy way to do this is you can just have a button that people click and they're automatically segmented. Like you, you don't need to get them to fill out any kind of form, just put a button in there and that says like, click this for early access and you automatically segment on the back end of that, whether you tag it, whether you create another segment, et cetera. One week out, same thing, two emails and sms, hyping it up, continuing to add people to the wait list in early access. Then when it's launch time. It's like ready to go. I'm blasting them with emails. Like, there's, there's no shame in blasting. Yeah, absolutely. Just bombarding people's inboxes during. And it's fine because this is the four day period where it is. Okay, now going back to what me and Brian said. Don't be that brand that just continues to extend the sale and extend the sale because you're so hungry for sales that you lose all of the brand affinity that you've built over the last few years for two days or one more day of like a good sale.
- [09:10]
B
Yeah, but, but don't be, don't be afraid to unload the clip on Black Friday. I think a lot of brands send three to five emails. People, you know, you're catching people, they're, they're chilling at home. Like the email you sent that morning, they don't see it if it's, if it's buried in their inbox and they actually are shopping on Black Friday, they probably didn't see your first one. So don't be afraid to send the next one.
- [09:29]
A
And like, no one like digs through their emails on Black Friday.
- [09:32]
B
And I think it's. No, they don't. And I think it's another great opportunity to introduce scarcity and urgency, like you said.
- [09:38]
A
Yeah.
- [09:38]
B
Too many people do the, you know, 12 hours till the sale's over stuff. It's like, you know, if you do a limited run of coupon codes, for example, and you actually hold to that, then that's a much better way to get people to see that and be like, only 375 coupons left. Yeah, no, that I, I totally agree. Day of. Let it, let it fly.
- [09:59]
A
So here's something I don't think brands think about or even do too often. If you work with influencers, chances are they have an email list and you can during this time pay them extra to leverage their email list and essentially create an email strategy for them to then execute against and, and promote to. And so again, if I have five influencers and, and newsletters are becoming such a thing where influencers or athletes, whatever, have their own, their own newsletters. For example, like, do you see Kyle Kuzma Now's a newsletter. I did it running through Beehive. Like, so, you know, you, you work with these athletes, pay extra to hit their email list. And very similar, you know, whether it's two or three emails that you're blasting through. But the key here is if you want to do this, you have to make it very simple for them to execute. Like, if it's plug and play. Plug and play, it has to be plug and play. You probably have to even manage it where you. You create the designs, you make the working files, you schedule it, all of that. But you're leveraging again, like such an influential individual, whether it's an athlete, an influencer, an ambassador, whatever, that's built up a great email list, but you're getting that your sale. And especially if they, their audience knows that they're integrated with a brand heavily like it does. It's not bad, right? It's not going to look bad. It's just that influencers getting their bag during Black Friday as well. And like, you set it up with the code, all that, and it works very well. Have you seen a good amount of brands do that or is this like, net new?
- [11:20]
B
That would be new. I mean, I think partnership activation is definitely good, but they'll have to have a very preferred relationship with the creator. So that's the only challenge for a lot of people. They might not have those in place, but it's another reason why you need to be activating an influencer program at all times.
- [11:37]
A
Yeah, I was having a conversation yesterday with a brand and they're just like, we need to be doing influencers, having them post for us or post about us. And I'm like, do you think about this all wrong? Like, that is very 2019 way of thinking when it comes to influencers. It's like you have influencers and then you have these content pillars, and those influencers are integrated into your content pillars. Like, you're figuring out how to leverage them within your overall organic content strategy. A brand that honestly does it well, they execute it well. But the content's bad is athletic greens. So athletic greens like Huberman, Chris Williamson, all of these guys are part of their influencer ecosystem or whatever, their celebrity ecosystem. And athletic greens will create content on their page with that's net new content. They're not like repurposing a pod clip or anything like that. It's like, net new content with Huberman, but the content is so bad. And not because, like, what Huberman's saying is bad. It's like it's not formatted right? Like the series or the pillar is just bad overall.
- [12:32]
B
It's why podcast stuff works, because it feels, when it. When it's done right, it feels so native. The ad read feels like, oh, this is a very aligned partnership. But you take Huberman out of the podcast and you have him start Plugging you on Athletic Green's page, it's like that's gonna kind of come off a little more stale.
- [12:50]
A
Damn series on. On point. That's what she thought. That's crazy. So, okay, next portion, ads. So the thing that I like to do here is I want the teams to start looking at older top, older, top performing ads or ad creative and start repackaging them against different formats. So similar to, I think the framework that I shared a few weeks ago in a different episode where it's like, okay, if you can take one parent topic or one parent creative or idea around that creative and start repackaging it, what are all the 6, 7, 8. I think it's 10 different formats that you can plug that idea through so that now you can start testing that creative. So in Black Friday is ready to go, you're just adding the sale, you're changing the copy, you're changing maybe some of the. The aspects, but the ad, like you have the best ads, right? Ready to go. Yeah, that is key. That's all. Especially like during Black Friday that everybody's cranking up ad their ad budgets. It's key to have your ad strategy in play and start testing that beforehand.
- [13:46]
B
Yeah. And don't be afraid to create an actual video around. You know, people are going to get just bombarded with graphics. And during this time, everyone's got the little Santa hat hanging off the letter. You know, it's. It's all going to look very similar. And so be afraid to kind of throw founder on there and be like, look, guys, we're not a big fan of discounts, but we know this is a big time for a lot of American families. Black Friday sales live now, it'll just pattern interrupt enough where people be like, oh, this is cool. That's all you're really looking for. It's not like trying to blow them away. But don't just be one of the lost in the sea of Canva template graphics.
- [14:24]
A
Huge. I mean, big time. You'll notice it if you do run through the story feed. If you run through the actual feed, the Instagram reels, algorithm feed, whatever. It doesn't matter which one you go through. You're gonna see the same templates for ads bombarding your feed. And it's so easy to just take some formats that are currently working and remake them and remake those ad variations so that you stand out because it's all about to be the same thing. Like that Canva template with a big 40% off with a product.
- [14:53]
B
Like some, like maybe Arrows pointing, turkey involved. I don't know. There's all sorts of Santa hats and tricks. I mean, something that I think more people should do. And I find myself doing this a lot. I. I'm in a. On a tall apartment building and have a long elevator ride sometimes. And I will.
- [15:11]
A
This is the weirdest flex, people.
- [15:13]
B
No, no, no, not flex. It. This is.
- [15:15]
A
Here's another elevator ride and I'm to.
- [15:17]
B
My penthouse and I'm pretty tall, so I. So, But a lot of the time, like, not. Not like creeping or anything, but, like, I will kind of watch people open up their phone and passively, like, swipe through stories and like, it's such, like, crackhead behavior that people are interacting with social media with that. It truly ingrains in my head how crazy it is when someone stops on your thing. You know, people will swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, close, close the app. Within the same elevator ride. They'll open the app again. Yeah, go back in there, swipe 20 times. Like, you have to understand that people's attention spans are just constantly getting taken away. And so how are you going to actually keep them? It's really not by doing the same thing that everyone else is doing. Those graphics will hit in your email list. They'll hit with your own audience. But as far as ads goes, I would highly recommend coming up with some unique formats.
- [16:12]
A
Back to your point, I think there's a misconception of if you are making content, you're making ads, whatever it is. You're not just competing against your next competitor. Competing against any. Every piece of content, every creator, every brand, every individual that's making content and publishing online like that is all highlights.
- [16:29]
B
You. You're competing. It's Black Friday and people are watching football and Thanksgiving and they're recapping the football game on their IG feed. Like, that is the standard you're competing against.
- [16:40]
A
100% crazy fact. Did you. So did you watch the Alabama Georgia game? Did you watch? Okay, yeah. You saw that catch by that Williams guy?
- [16:48]
B
Yeah, I watched the whole thing. That was okay.
- [16:49]
A
It was a crazy game. That guy that caught the ball, did you. Do you.
- [16:53]
B
Are you aware of this, 17?
- [16:55]
A
Yeah.
- [16:55]
B
Yeah.
- [16:55]
A
You aware who he is? Who is he?
- [16:57]
B
Is he actually Serena Williams?
- [16:59]
A
Yeah.
- [17:00]
B
Wow.
- [17:00]
A
Crazy. It makes sense, though. Yeah, it makes sense.
- [17:04]
B
He's a freak.
- [17:05]
A
Caught the ball, like, knew where he was at. Body awareness. Hits the spin, hits another spin.
- [17:09]
B
Video game, 17 years old, like, crazy. He's too good for college football.
- [17:14]
A
Yeah. Okay, so next thing that's very obvious heavily ignored lead capture. You don't want to be using the. That the typical 10% off away to you. Like make the. Make the lead capture, the exit intent, whatever specific to Black Friday, specific to the sale. Leverage the copy as well. If you are doing a descending ladder for a discount like integrate that into your. Into the copy may add a little countdown timer that shows like 30% off for the next 24 hours. Underneath it in the sub headline put that it's 25% off for the next 24 hours.
- [17:44]
B
Whatever.
- [17:44]
A
Yeah, like leverage those things there because that's going to make a big impact. And then on the back end of that, don't just have a one time email. Like send people through an email sequence that at that point's like getting sent every 12 to 24 hours. Especially during like again this is the time where you're pushing, pushing, pushing capture an email. Do it, you know, do it. Well, I like it for it to be very specific. We talked about this in the last episode if you haven't watched it. But for example David protein bar. They have their email and their lead capture and then their exit intent is ultimate protein guide made by Peter Tia. They made like a full on like if you sign up it's a.
- [18:20]
B
You know who they stole that from? Is Pro Mix really here locally? Yeah, Promix. For the longest time their lead magnet was calculate your macros.
- [18:28]
A
I mean that's different though.
- [18:29]
B
It was kind of like a quiz. It was a quiz lead magnet. But there's his email capture. So you're right. But um, you had to submit your email to go through the quiz. But it was very similar. It was like calculate how much protein you need in a day. Kind of go through like a standard.
- [18:42]
A
Gotcha.
- [18:43]
B
Do I want to grow muscle? Do I want to.
- [18:44]
A
This is almost like a. A little course made by PRT on email which is pretty, pretty cool.
- [18:49]
B
Crazy buy in from them too.
- [18:50]
A
Yeah, it's crazy wicked.
- [18:52]
B
Can run a funnel around that.
- [18:53]
A
The next thing. This is something that a lot of brands ignore and I, I don't think they're even too aware of. It is gamification. Again going back to true classic. Going to David's protein bar. You want to have the gamification layer on your product pages especially when people check out or sorry when people check out. So that during Black Friday it is. There's so much impulse happening and so if all of a sudden I'm going to check out and it's gamified and it's like I'm $5 away from free X products or free shipping or free whatever it is. You're, you're adding in like another layer of impulse to get them to take to buy one more thing. And the key to that then is like, if you, if you see ones that are executed well, they make it very easy to upsell right underneath. It's like, add this to cart. You might also like this. Add this to cart. Yeah, and you want to have that gamification built in. Especially if you have all the email and SMS go now, all of the ads running, all the emails, etc. You want to have that gamification layer just to take advantage of that impulse. That's like, dude, people are trigger happy, you know, super trigger happy during, during Black Friday. So the other thing, we talked about this a long time ago, but a, a way that I love adding urgency to a catalog page or even a product page was Rogue Fitness, I think, I don't know if you remember me talking about this, but like during Black Friday, if you were on a catalog page for barbells, for example, right next, right underneath the, the barbells, it showed a progress bar and it was like only a thousand on sale. And it showed the progress bar of like, okay, it's 462 are gone, right? Only 300 and something left. Or that's terrible math. Like 408 left, right? And they just showed the, the progress bar and it showed it ticking and the whole time it was like, you know, if you, if you got there an hour, you know, you got there and then also, and there's 400 and you go back an hour because you're like, damn, I really want it. But again, it's not getting you over the line. All of a sudden. Yeah, yeah, it's 200 left. You're like, oh shit, if I wait another hour, like it's probably going to be gone. You want, I don't know the software or what tool it is and I should have done the research to find it.
- [20:57]
B
It's not really like a software tool. There's, I mean you're like a plugin pagefly. There's a lot of different like products that can kind of build something. But honestly, like, this stuff isn't hard to build within Shopify's like pages side of things. So it's just, it's kind of like an LP basically instead of having it on your product page.
- [21:14]
A
That was one of my favorite things that I saw last Black Friday was the implementation of this because the entire page all Of a sudden, the entire catalog page was like a time. Like a ticking time bomb. Yeah, right. At some point during this entire sale, everything was going to be out and I didn't want to be left out. And so therefore I bought way too much weightlifting equipment that, well, I should.
- [21:35]
B
Have got, I guess, you know, helping you on the journey.
- [21:38]
A
Yeah, it's all part of the journey. Next one abandoned cart, again, has to be specific to Black Friday. I think it's, it's too often neglected and not made like not specified towards the product. The time of year, the sale going on. It's usually just like the generic. Hey, you left this in your car. Here's 10% off to get you over the line kind of. Kind of stuff. And we should be. They should brand should be a lot more intentional with the abandoned car. Think about it. Somebody purchased and they didn't purchase and then you don't put a time and attention into that. Next email is, is terrible. I think it's like one of those things where people always neglect like a thank you page that was like thank you for signing up. Well, you know, and it's like some generic response instead of writing out like an amazing thank you page that gets almost like immediate buying.
- [22:27]
B
It's a lot of valuable real estate to cross sell upsell right after they just already purchased. Like the wallet is open, so ask them to bring the card back out. I think abandoned checkout stuff. You know, the subject line, you left something in your cart, everyone knows what it is. So, you know, think about it in that term, it's okay. How are we surpassing this customer's expectations during this peak sales period? It's like discount is, you know, a lot of the subject lines you're going to use to drive urgency and scarcity in your offer, you probably want to introduce into your abandoned card as well. Yeah, like, don't be afraid to send that email twice. If you have a banger subject line saying there's only 200 left, then, you know, use that. Don't just say you left something in your car. Yeah, because like, hey, you remember how you didn't buy this thing still here. It's like, duh, I'm sure you want to take my money at some point.
- [23:15]
A
Thank you 100%.
- [23:17]
B
But that's not really like motivating me or addressing any of my kind of concerns at all.
- [23:22]
A
The other thing that I've been seeing more and more that I haven't seen in the past a lot. And I think it's a wide open lane for a Lot of brands but you know, you could build like a DM wait list. So with many chat like right, you see the typical thing where it's like comment this and I'll send you this. In that same flow though, you can add an automated response where it's like hey, do you want us to send you early access to xyz? Just click yes. That yes makes now helps you build a DM wait list that you can at any point and you drop DM that like you could DM 2,000 people at once. 10,000 people at once.
- [23:57]
B
Yeah.
- [23:58]
A
And know this because I signed up for one of the we won't name brands because I'm not a fan anymore. But and so I signed up for this, this DM list. And so now anytime they drop a product, I get hit with a specific DM that takes me to the catalog page, the product page, whatever it is. Yeah, but such an easy like the friction. There's no friction. That's the thing.
- [24:16]
B
Yeah.
- [24:17]
A
It is a one click subscribe and it's not even like a one click after email. It's just, you just have to hit yes.
- [24:23]
B
It'll be fascinating to see when Meta ends up clicking Cloning TikTok shop in a better way, how they're able to enable features like that for people. Because you talked about influencers announcing things for the brand. Like think about that where it's, you know, if you're sending people in DM, you're signaling you're open to receive these DMs, send them the DM conversion points right there in the DM. Like a lot of those creator tools. It seems like Meta could continue to build out for people because they've already showed like manychat's a really new thing. Like that's pretty innovative for you to be able to like send those automations through Instagram. Instagram's traditionally been very closed off API. They don't let other people do stuff like that. So as they build out their affiliate program, it'll be cool to see the.
- [25:09]
A
Last layer is organic content on the organic side. Very similar to email. The same way I have it segmented into four weeks out to launch day. I'm really running through the same sequence of getting one post out. The thing is one week out and launch week, that is where I'm, I'm blowing up the social feed, absolutely tearing it apart. But I'm thinking about it through this lens. I have a strategy for what I'm doing on stories, a strategy for what I'm doing in Reels and then carousels and then influencers. Those are the four buckets that I'd be looking at. And then how does it all play into our organic content strategy versus, like, hey, did we get our two posts out? Like, no, no, no. Like, that doesn't cut anymore. Like, what are you doing native to stories? What are you doing native to reels? What are you doing native to carousels? And then how are you leveraging your. Your influencers to create, again, a cohesive organic content strategy?
- [26:02]
B
For sure. It's all about just meeting customers where they are. In my opinion. A lot of the times brands just fill up the grid to fill up the grid. That one doesn't work anymore, which is honestly a big thing about what I'm about to talk about.
- [26:14]
A
Yeah. So let's segue. So tell me about Heart and Soil. And I think it was Heart and Soil that you were mentioning, which again, like, I use heart and Soil. The hard part about it is, dude, it's like you have to take 42 pills a day for sure. And each one's like, I'm eating bull testicles. Eating.
- [26:30]
B
It's a lot of desecrated animals.
- [26:32]
A
Yeah, dude. Then it's like liver, then heart organs.
- [26:35]
B
At what point do you just, like, take, you know, start your own farm and take it out back and shoot it, Figure it out. But. So the biggest thing with Heart and Soil, what I want to talk about is this thing called, and it's ironic because there is already an existing framework called the Tentpole Framework, but I don't think that's actually helpful. The Tentpole framework has previously been, like, something where people orient a marketing calendar around big events. That's not what we're going to talk about.
- [27:01]
A
Are you saying tentpole?
- [27:03]
B
Tentpole, yeah.
- [27:04]
A
Okay.
- [27:04]
B
Yeah. But the biggest thing people need to understand is social media has moved from a social graph to an interest graph. So people are used to discover new things through peers. They used to be sharing it to peers. And that was why, if you and I were friends and we had a mutual friend, I would inevitably see them on my feed without ever having to try. And that was how social networks grew. And they've all shifted as a result of TikTok to these interest graphs. And so as a result, brands need to think of themselves as creators. It isn't enough to just, like, fill the grid. You have to captivate your audience to actually grow on these platforms. Like, followers are less and less relevant. Like, you're only as good as your last video. And so, you know, as a Brand owner, you want to build your interest graph. Like, what are the things your brand stands for is related to and how can you put a unique spin to that? So to do, to build your interest graph as a brand, you need to ask yourself these three questions to identify what content to make. Number one, who are some creators you admire? These are people that you like their style, you like their messaging, you like their formats. And I think it's important to understand that because you want to feel similar to them. You want your content to appear on someone's feed and they'll be like, oh, this kind of reminds me of so and so, number two, what is the macro trend or wave that you're riding? So this is something that I think far too many brands don't actually value. And the reason for this being important, I, you know, back in the day, I raised $2 million of venture money. And the biggest thing we were taught in our pitch deck was the only way a VC is going to give a shit about you is if you're part of a macro trend. If you're a part of a trend where they think the world is going, yeah. Now, granted, I think VCs are all idiots, but. And you could keep that on the recording. But like, the biggest thing that they are right about is companies can only get huge when they have tailwinds. And so I think content is kind of similar where your content can really only be huge when it's a part of the conversation already. Like when you're a part of a macro trend. And so we'll talk a little bit more about how to find your macro trend later.
- [29:20]
A
But that's even like, why when we talk about trend jacking. Right, From a content perspective, absolutely. If a story is hot for 24 hours and I make a content, a piece of content that's relevant to that story, it's why it has so much more chance of taking off versus the latter. Like you're joining a conversation versus having to start the conversation. It's like a lunch table full of people versus like trying to get a bunch of people to join your lunch table. It's that same idea.
- [29:44]
B
And you got to think about the burden of proof of a video being good. It's. If you're trying to come up with a new conversation to your point, that video is going to have to be exceptional. Exceptional versus if you're trying to trend Jack and Newsjack, then you're just hoping to have like the best take out of all the takes because people are going to consume some of the takes. And so you just need to rise to the top of that already existing wave. The third question brand should ask is what format? When you're scrolling, like when you're on Instagram reels, when you're on TikTok, what format have you seen more than three times in an hour? So this could be. You've seen four or five podcast style clips. Have you seen like three or four flash cuts in the last hour? Like, okay, as a brand, like, you should be paying attention to those things and try and aspire to create content in those formats. That's what people are expecting to see. Now it's how do you apply your messaging to that format? That's already proven and you'll build a distinct style and messaging that'll make your brand feel more like a creator.
- [30:40]
A
The other thing too, I think there's, there's always like micro trends that I think brands can take advantage of as well. For example, any time that, or a lot of brands or a lot of creators, whatever, they'll leverage a headline within or a hook with a title hook within their video. Right. Right now just adding POV to that headline makes it some is like a micro trend. So instead of saying like, I just worked out for the second time today, it's like pov, you just worked out for the second time today?
- [31:09]
B
Yeah.
- [31:09]
A
All of a sudden if you pay attention to kind of what you're saying, like, did you see this three times in the last 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever, you'll notice little things like that where, okay, I shouldn't write the, the headline. Just a typical headline. I should say pov, X, Y, Z or, or like if you see aura being very relevant during like a 12 week span. Okay, how do I take something that was already going to make a story around it and now kind of repackage it to fit this thing that is micro trending 100%.
- [31:40]
B
Yeah, that's exactly it. There's a lot of different content where it'll be. There's a really viral trend right now where it'll show some sort of ancient magic wizard and it'll be two wizards with massive beards walking through a forest. And the caption will just say me and bro on all the adventures that we're about to undertake. And I think me and bro as a way to indicate you and someone you're about to do an activity with, is just a way to speak native social language that most brands would just be scared to even touch. And so there's plenty of ways to. It doesn't have to be you and bros, but there's plenty of ways to apply that to how your target audience speaks, which is something we've covered on multiple segments here.
- [32:23]
A
Yeah.
- [32:24]
B
So who's a brand nailing this? Right. It's. I think Heart and Soil does an excellent job. And so this is Heart and Soil's content playbook. So they're using what I like to call the tent pole framework. So think about your brand's target market as a giant tent and everyone underneath it could potentially buy from you. Each tent pole is a content topic that isn't directly the product, but it's related to the overall brand's mission and message. So Heart and Soil sells animal based supplements. The macro trend behind them is the rise of alternative medicine and remedies that are not mainstream. So as a result, their content covers stuff like the truth about salt or fun facts about grounding sauna benefits. You know, there's even seed oil memes in there. So, you know, none of this is directly related to the product that they sell. But it does advance the overall cause that they're a part of. And so it builds affinity with the target audience who also wants to see that message be put forth. Why does that result in revenue? Because if you're thinking about someone who is product aware, they're in the alternative medicine macro trend and they're looking at different brands. We talked about this with the dupe.com breakdown where dupe.com literally had a competitor named Dupe that was not leveraging content marketing to meet their audience, where they were spending their time, which is social media. And as a result, when there is a binary choice where you're going to choose one versus the other, you're going to go with the one that's talking the way that you want to be talked to. So that's kind of how Heart and Soil does it. They create a lot of content around things that are sort of tangentially related to them without actually pushing their own.
- [34:07]
A
Products, which I love because it goes back to that idea of what is that narrative then? What are the ideas, the values, the that all of those things that feed that narrative and that people care about and that people consume and feel like they align with that. Those values. And so therefore they want to associate themselves with that brand or use that brand. And like looking at this, it's again, they sell beef testicles or cow testicles or whatever it is, but then they're making content around salt.
- [34:36]
B
Yeah.
- [34:36]
A
Right. And it's because seed oils. Yeah. Because that person's also going to take the goal testicles well and because it's.
- [34:42]
B
Going to create this problem aware person who is then seeking solutions. And so I think that's a big thing that people. Hormozi has the 80%, 8020 rule where he's like not selling for 80% of his content and then he's selling for 20%. And every brand can do the same. Where if you're just establishing problems that exist all the time, eventually people are going to seek out solutions and then you just want them to land with you. So this is how we're going to use the 10P strategy for our brand cane footwear. So step one, we're going to identify the macro trend. In their case, it's recovery. And longevity is becoming more popular, there's more social acceptance of athleisure and there's a desire of innovation or futuristic tech. Because we're kind of living in 2024, people expect those type of products to be available. So you know, their creator program is super robust. They have a lot of influencers that are already pushing their stuff and there is a lot of successful content around. How to recover after a marathon or Six reasons why the sauna is the best way to reset your. What's it called?
- [35:49]
A
Circadian rhythm?
- [35:50]
B
No, the acid. What's the acid?
- [35:52]
A
Lactic acid?
- [35:53]
B
Yeah, six ways. The sauna is the best way to reset your lactic acid levels. They have a lot of that content in the recovery longevity space. And so here's some ideas for how we'll kind of action on this longevity concept. Say we have an idea and the content idea is five plyo exercises to heal knee soreness. What I think brands need to do more of is create the formats that they've seen on their own feed and take concepts and ideas and repurpose them into these different formats. So if we're creating five plyo exercises to heal knee soreness as one concept, that can be put together as an image carousel that can be put together as a horizontal vertical video where it's a landscape formatted video with a headline above it. It can be podcast style where they look into the camera and say these are five plyo exercises to heal your knee soreness. And the fourth one is you could do the standard voiceover third person POV where it's just someone working out in a gym and they're talking about here's how you kind of can kill new.
- [36:56]
A
Sorts of green screen too.
- [36:57]
B
100%, you can do green screen as well. That's five different ways to package the same unique concept. So you source the concept from that macro trend and then you repackage, you repackage it five different ways. And that's how you get to that. 30 posts a month. It's not like always reaching for, you know, happy National Dog Day from cane footwear. It's like, no, here's a tangible piece of value for you that you should actually stick around and follow us for more of. So, you know, another thing that they could do is like lifestyle content, showing the product in desirable locations. Like, there's a lot of acceptance these days around athleisure being something you wear on a morning walk. Like, we've gotten less and less formal with our attire. I think Kane can absolutely be a part of that 100%. You know, they could create lifestyle content just demonstrating where the product is acceptable, where it looks good as well. Like to drive home the value that this is a shoe you can wear anywhere. And then the last one kind of pertaining to this desire for innovation, is show the shoe being made. There's cool parts about the shoe. There's product features. They have nodes in the sole, they have a wide toe box. There's a lot of things that are innovative related to traditional shoes. And so just from those three concepts, which is recovery, which is lifestyle content, which is maybe like some manufacturing walkthrough, each one of those, you could multiply up across five different formats. And we have 15 pieces of content to push throughout the entire month.
- [38:22]
A
The most so for people that don't know, like we worked with Kane 2ish years ago. Yeah, like, you know, when we were building rare and the most viral piece of content that we made for them was something got like 1.2, 1.3 million views. And it was that it was like 5, like we, we did a collab with Matt Choi and it was like five warm up exercises. But like Matt was in the canes. Yeah, right. It was a simple thing we did on the track and it was a simple video to shoot, but it absolutely crushed. The other thing was, dude, we tried hard because they have like a scientist or a doctor or something like that, like P.T. in New York. And we wanted to do a whole series with them on the innovation, how like the actual shoe helps with recovery and blood flow and all of those things. But there's such an opportunity there to, to integrate those into the content strategy because right now it doesn't hit on those layers.
- [39:15]
B
So one of the things that I think brands should be doing, especially when you have a founder or Subject matter expert on your staff is record a podcast with them. Yeah, a lot of clips of podcasts go viral these days. And there's kind of the common. One of my favorite memes these days is people saying we need to stop selling podcast equipment because everyone's, like, starting their own. But what brands can do is if you have the founders, without a doubt, almost always going to be the prime expert on your product and solution. And so record a podcast with them and have different prompts like so with Kettle and Fire, who's a new brand that I just onboarded. Like, we're going to record a podcast with the founder who's super knowledgeable about the food system. He's super knowledgeable about, like, supply chain and limitations and subsidies, you name it. And so within that conversation, how can we get 25 different clips to put into the content calendar over three months? And I think any brand could do that. Think about all the brands that you work with on the socially doing the.
- [40:17]
A
Same thing with Hugh mantra, where it's like the founder is going to be doing an entire pod series that's going to be ran as paid ads and then also be organic content.
- [40:27]
B
Absolutely. And you just got to get in the studio and do it. But as long as you script it in the same way as you would another piece of content, then that long form session, which could be two hours of filming, could be worth 20, 25 pieces of content. So I think that's another one that you know, to your point about the pt, it's like, we definitely need to get someone with crazy expertise on camera.
- [40:48]
A
Couldn't agree more.
- [40:49]
B
Yep.
- [40:50]
A
Shit, dude. Well, that's a wrap. I got to prep for a community workshop that I got to do here, but I got to go get coffee first.
- [40:56]
B
I feel you. Well, if you enjoyed this episode, please do us a favor. Share it with someone you think could also benefit from it. The comments, the reviews, the likes, subscribing on YouTube, all of it helps us continue to invest in making this better. And that's really what we're trying to do, is just make this the best business podcast on the Internet. So, that being said, we'll catch you all next week.