← The Marketing Millennials
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- [00:02]
Daniel Murray
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the off. We are back with another episode of the Marking Millennials podcast. Today I'm joined by Marcus Sheridan, co founder of pricekuide AI and author of the brand new book Endless Customer. Marcus is known for transforming the way businesses build trust and attract customers. And if you've ever heard of they ask, you answer, you know the impact of his work. In this episode we dive into why so many businesses are struggling to acquire customers right now. How to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. What buyers actually want. In today's AI driven zero click world, the four pillars of building a brand that wins, no matter the industry. If you want to create a customer acquisition engine that never stops, this episode's for you. We are getting into this episode now. We are here with Marcos Sheridan. It's good to catch up. It's going to be cool because he just wrote a book, so there's going to be a lot of cool information from this book that he just wrote and this customer. But welcome to the podcast, Marcus.
- [01:42]
Marcus Sheridan
Hey man, it's good to be here. We should have done this a while while ago, but man, better late than never. So let's get this party started.
- [01:50]
Daniel Murray
I, I think it's better now because more people are listening.
- [01:52]
Marcus Sheridan
So there you go. There you go. Cause you're a hard stinking worker, Daniel. You've been on the grind for a long time, man.
- [01:58]
Daniel Murray
I want to get into the first question because I want to get into this conversation, but I know a lot of businesses are struggling right now. What has changed in how customers discover and trust brands today?
- [02:12]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, man, it's really interesting time. Just let me give you an example. Just yesterday I was in Miami where you are sir, lucky dog. And meeting with a bunch of personal injury attorneys and they kept telling me, I don't understand. We are seeing so much less results from Google than we've ever seen before. Why is that? Of course they're not realizing the full impact that AI is having on not just traditional SEO but, but on Google Ads. It's getting more and more difficult. It's also interesting because what we're seeing here is people trust brands less and so brands have to work harder to win that trust, which to me is everything in business. It's, you know, it's essentially what we're all about. Also we're seeing a huge trend where more and more businesses are leaving their marketing agency. I was looking at a stat the other day, Daniel. It's pretty interesting that in 2021, 33% of all businesses that were working with an agency were looking to make a change within six months. By 2022, that number was 38%. By 23, it was 55%. And so those traditional agency models where everybody's doing the work for you, they're becoming less and less effective. And where the world's headed is you gotta be able to create your own stuff. You, your business has to think and be like a creator. And so this is just to name a few of the things that are going on in the market. Let me name one more too. While we're at it, another stat for you from Gartner. 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. 75% of all buyers say they would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. So this doesn't mean we hate salespeople. It just means that we want control and we don't want to talk to a salesperson until we're ready, until we're comfortable, until we're informed. And so that's where we're headed. Which means as a business, as a marketer, you've got to offer more self service opportunities, give the buyer more control to get information that historically they would have had to have gotten through talking to a human. Now let them get that sooner. Because if you don't make it faster, if you don't make it easier, if you don't make it more friction free, they're going to get really dang frustrated.
- [04:50]
Daniel Murray
I want to go into the first part of what you said is you talk to these injury lawyers, they're seeing less results on Google. But is, is traditional SEO as we know it considered dead or is it still like alive?
- [05:06]
Marcus Sheridan
It's alive. But if we look at a typical Google, you know, like Google results page, right now you could be ranked number one, Daniel. And the person has to make three scrolls just to get to see the number one ranking. Which is crazy because what do you got first? You got biggest sponsored ads in the history of the world is what we're seeing now, that look cloaked, that's first. Then you got the AI answer and the AI summary and then you've got related questions and then you probably got some videos to watch. And then finally whoever's ranked number one gets to pick up the Scraps that are left behind. And that's no bueno. Not if you're building your house on Google search. I mean that is a very slippery slope. So is Google Search dead today? No. Is it a dying model for success? Absoinkin lutely. And you should not be building your entire strategy around, hey, I gotta get found on Google. Because what you instead have to say is, I need to become a known and trusted brand, individually and collectively. Me personally and my business must become a known and trusted brand. Daniel, Brand has never been more important than it is right now. But it's only going to become more important in the coming years. You're gonna have so many companies. That said, I just don't understand. For 25 years we dominated on Google and now we're just not seeing it. I decided I don't what happened. And the world will have passed them by, dude, because they refuse to evolve with the times.
- [06:53]
Daniel Murray
I also want to go into this. You mentioned AI and AI search is at the top of now Google. I don't think a lot of people are talking about how buyers are now using AI as a tool for search. They're like talking about, hey, Google's not. But I sometimes will try to compare tools on AI just to see what AI is spitting out. And then, then I will go ask my peers and then I'll go to Google and maybe do some research. So the AI has added like another forum for people to go into to do market research now, dude, especially if.
- [07:36]
Marcus Sheridan
You'Re using the deep research tool that ChatGPT has, which is off the hook. I mean, it's absolutely extraordinary. It's the greatest thing I've like, I've seen since, you know, sliced bread. Look, let's say today only 5% of people are using a tool, let's call it ChatGPT, so that, that, that Google has lost 5%. You can be sure that number is going to grow every single day from now until the end of time. And it's not just search results, friends, it is ads too. If you stop using Google to get your answers, it means now that that person is no longer seeing ads either. So if your business model is built on Google Ads and built on Google search, I just can't stress this enough, Daniel. You cannot build your house on that. That is a house of sand, right? And eventually it will wash away. And that's why you have to build your business on principles that last forever, like becoming the most known and trusted in your market. Trust is a principle. It's not going away. But if you are platform centric, then you can be assured that there's a. There's a finite lifespan for your business.
- [08:57]
Daniel Murray
Okay, so what I'm hearing is you have to now become the most, like, known and trusted brand in the industry. But, like, I want to know, like, the get into, like, this new playbook of how to become the most known and trusted. So if traditional, like SEO is not working right now, what are some new strategies that people should be adopting today?
- [09:20]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, so let me give you four. They sound pretty like surface level, but they're not. And most companies aren't doing them. Daniel. So in the book Endless Customers, we really built this entire system around the four pillars of a known and trusted brand. Here they are. Number one, and as I'm saying this, if you're listening to this right now, I want you to ask yourself very honestly, are we doing this? Number one, you gotta be willing to say online what others in your space are not willing to say. Give you a very, very quick example. Just met with these attorneys again yesterday in Miami. I asked them in the room, I said, are you all telling your customers what they want to know? Oh, yes, yes. Websites are great. Okay. The number one question that somebody has that's had a personal injury and they're thinking about going to court is, what happens if I lose? So I said to these attorneys in the room, there's like 25. I said, how many of you talk on your website right now about or answer the question of, well, what happens if we don't win the case? Not a single person in there addresses the question. Daniel. Why? Because they're not willing to discuss what others want to know. The buyer wants to know this, in this case, the, you know, their potential client. And you see this with all types of subjects. Now, originally in the ask, you answer. I talked a lot about this first one with what's called the big five. And the big five are the five subjects that every buyer wants to know and businesses generally don't want to talk about them. And those big five questions are, and this applies to the first two pillars. First pillar is you gotta be willing to talk about what others aren't willing to talk about online, say what others are willing to say. And number two pillar is you gotta be willing to show with video what others aren't willing to show. And so as you're thinking about these two things, you want to focus in on the big five, because the big five continue to, like, literally, they dominate the economy in terms of the way people do research and what they want to know and what they're asking. Yet businesses don't want to talk about these five things. Here's the five. Number one, as buyers, consumers, we want to know how much is it? Just give me a stinking sense for how much this is going to cost. That's number one. Number two, we want to know what are the problems, the negatives, the issues with it? How could this blow up in my face, basically? Number three, we want to know how does this thing compare to this other thing that I'm looking at? So we love to compare stuff online. We're prolific at comparing things. Number four, we want to know reviews. The thing about reviews, Daniel, it's not just the good reviews. We want the good, the bad and the ugly reviews. And then finally, number five of the big five is just what we refer to as best, best, most top, any type of extreme because we want to be able to stack things up against each other. So cost problems, comparisons, reviews, best. That's the big five. And still to this day, most companies don't address these things. Listen, these are the fundamental questions everybody wants to know. This is what everybody's searching. And so what do you want them to do? Do you want to get them to get their answers from someone else? You, at this point in time, as a business, you, you are teaching search engines, you are teaching AI and you are teaching your customer. And all of them have essentially the same questions. But most folks ignore these fundamental questions. You take a B2B service based business, Daniel, do you know how many B2B service based businesses talk about cost on their website?
- [12:49]
Daniel Murray
Probably less than 10%. Yeah, like I was, I was gonna say less than 20%, but 20, 10%, I was probably being generous to be perfect.
- [12:57]
Marcus Sheridan
Case in point. I talked about this on LinkedIn today. One of my co workers reached out to a very known brand about a SaaS product and she said, I'm just trying to get a sense for pricing. And what did they say? What do you think they said, Daniel? You know what they said? I can't give you that information, but if we schedule a time with one of our product demonstrators, then they can give you some pricing at that time. And she's like, what the literal heck are you talking about? I'm just trying to get a sense for pricing. You mean to tell me you're not going to have, you're not going to give me any pricing information at all? Person's like, I'm sorry, I don't have that information available to me. What a lie, dude. This person has the pricing information, they're choosing not to. Why? Because they've been instructed not to. So this idea, look, when people get on the buyer's journey, let's say they have a problem, they say, I think I might want to get a swimming pool or I might need to hire an attorney or I might need to, you know, get an insurance provider, whatever it is. First thing they want to know, roughly how much is it going to cost. Yet businesses will argue that. No, no, no, no, no, I can only bring that up at the end. Nope, you should bring it up twice in the buyer's journey, once at the very beginning so they can answer the question, am I even in the game? Can I even afford this? Roughly what's this going to cost? And number two, at the end, when they're meeting with the salesperson and they get an exact price, those are the two points in the journey. But yet we want to skip the first, most fundamental one. It's crazy, man, it doesn't make any sense. But you got these supposedly smart companies that are still fighting for that and then they wonder why conversions are lower and they wonder why trust is lower than it's been. You got to be willing to say what others aren't willing to say. Cost is one of the most obvious.
- [14:51]
Daniel Murray
I also, I also think, I mean it's been in the news like we're kind of trained now that we, that we want to know price because of the healthc care system really not showing any pricings. And we want.
- [15:03]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, have you seen that they've come out with now laws in healthcare that are forcing the these healthcare providers to have transparent pricing. See, transparent pricing is. It is the future. The third pillar of this, to become a known and trusted brand is selling way that others aren't willing to sell. And just to kind of continue this conversation, let me give you an example of showing, saying and selling in a way that others aren't willing to show, say or sell in your space. There's a stat that says 75% of all buyers would prefer to have a seller free sales experience. Right. So this means that we want to have control of the buyer's journey, which means there's got to be more self service. And we talked about that for a minute. But what does self service look like? Self service is when you allow someone to do like an interactive tool on your website that gives them an answer like a recommendation or something like that. Whereas before they would have had to talk to a human to get that, maybe a salesperson. But now they get that with you. The number one way to do this is a self pricing tool. I call them essentially pricing estimators. Right? Now what is a pricing estimator? A pricing estimator is a tool that allows someone to come to your site, they answer a series of questions. Just like if they came to you and they said, give me a sense for roughly what might this cost? Well, you ask them a series of questions and then you give them a general range. It's easy to do. It generates a lot of trust. A pricing estimator does this incredibly well. I actually started a company, a software company called Price Guide AI. It's the Internet's fastest and most effective pricing estimator tool. Allows you to build it in less than 30 minutes up and working on your site. It's amazing. Uses AI, blah, blah, right? I've got a ton of data on this. What we see, Daniel, is when somebody adds a pricing estimator to their homepage, generally speaking, they get a 300% increase in leads from the traffic, their existing website traffic. So you got all these marketers out there that are saying, man, I'm struggling to get leads. Well, it's because you're doing it the way you've been doing it for 25 years. Do you have a pricing estimator on your website right now? Because you durn well should. Because now if they take that interactive experience, this is a sales process they've never had with anybody else. So you're selling differently. You're showing them the pricing, you're showing what no one's willing to show. You're talking about a subject that no one's willing to talk about. And now all of a sudden you're generating way more leads. So that's an example of a self pricing tool. It's amazing. You know, another one that we've tested with now with my company, Daniel, and so at Impact, my, my coaching company, we, we teach organizations how to do the ask. You answer, slash endless customers. And so we'll build custom self service tools. One of the ones that we've seen that's extraordinarily effective is when you allow someone to choose a salesperson instead of being given a salesperson. So imagine this, Daniel. Let's say you want to buy a new home, okay? And you go to a real estate firm and there's 10 different agents that you could work with. But you get to the agents page and you see these 10 agents, you get to see their image, you get to see a video about them, you get to read a bio about them and then you get to choose which agent you work with. How stinking awesome of a user experience is, is that what we've seen is whenever we do this and we've trusted in different industries like property investing and all this stuff, do you double the closing rates when they can choose what salesperson they work with? It's no different than I, when I choose what type of Uber I am going to take, choice matters. When I get choice, I get control. When I get control, I like it. And I say I want to do business with this company just like with Uber. And so the same thing applies here when it comes to really revolutionizing a sales process. Most I, I said to these attorneys yesterday, I said can you imagine showing your website visitors your attorneys and then letting them choose who they work with? I mean dude, you want to talk about an incredible user experience but you know, 1% of these attorneys will actually take action. Everybody else will say no, there's no way we could do that. That's impossible.
- [19:37]
Daniel Murray
Yeah. And they'll say this attorney has this amount of time and they don't want to do this and blah blah blah. And it's a whole just so I had this experience actually with a doctor whereas I went to the this healthcare place for a doctor and they, they try to get me to schedule with like someone else and I'm like I know I'm here for this doctor. Why is right schedule schedule me with someone else. Makes no sense to me.
- [20:05]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, trust is gone. Boom. Hasta la vista.
- [20:08]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, exactly. So you the the to the four pillars just reading the bag say what others aren't willing to say. So it's just like radical, like transparency.
- [20:18]
Marcus Sheridan
Radical transparency. Go where others aren't willing to go with what you're willing to say. Number number two, show what others aren't willing to show with video. Same thing, but now with video and in conjunction with that, when I say show, biggest key to that is you gotta start seeing yourself as a media company. And this is hard for a lot of people to understand. I know you get it Daniel. But organizations have to become video first, video centric and obsessed about showing what others aren't willing to show. We talk a lot about this in endless customers but the key is really the biggest move you can make is most organizations should have at least one full time videographer. But depending on the size of your organization, you should potentially have multiple. Right. So that's number two pillar show what others aren't willing to show with video. Think like a media company. Number three you got to be willing to sell in a way that others aren't willing to sell. Talked about that with self service, but there's a lot of other ways that you can sell differently. Number four is simply you got to be more human than others in your space are willing to be. Now you might hear that, you might say, well, that sounds pretty basic, that sounds pretty obvious, but. But it's like we're getting to the point where we want to see a face behind the brand. All right? There's a reason why everybody knows who Kylie Jenner is. But most dudes I know can't name her makeup line, but they can certainly name her name. You see what I'm saying? Because the person is more popular than their brand. And so each one of us, like Daniel, you've done a good job building a personal brand, right? This matters and it matters for everybody. I don't care if you're John the local plumber or if you're some thought leader online, brand matters because brand is what's going to get you through the test of time. When you know, the market goes in its cycles and when these platforms come and go, that known and trusted brand is the thing that's going to keep you afloat.
- [22:18]
Daniel Murray
I want to go into like one or two tactics that someone could do for each of these. So like for the say what others aren't willing to say, what are some things that you recommend that someone could just implement today?
- [22:29]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, biggest thing you could do is really just be aggressive about talking about all things to do with money. Okay. Cost, price, etc. That's the easiest way to do it. Like for example, with these attorneys. Yesterday I said how many of you have have a case calculator on your website right now that would give someone an estimate of what their case could be worth? None of them had it, but everybody wants to know that. That's an example of saying showing and selling in a way that's different. Okay, so say that's a major thing. Continue to follow the big five. You should be openly comparing yourself with your competitors, not in a negative way, but in a very honest, open way. Creating a best of list expectations in your area. You know who are some of the best XYZ providers in XYZ area? Make the list because AI can learn from that list and then you can now help control that conversation. So these are all examples of saying what others aren't willing to say. One other example of saying what others aren't willing to say is one of the keys to disruption and in the book, I give the readers a bunch of prompts as to how they can really disrupt their industry. One of the best ways to disrupt is if I said to anybody right now, what is it about your industry that you're not aligned with that frustrates you that you think should change? Usually that's a really good place to start, because in every industry, it doesn't matter what it is. There are certain things that you're like, it shouldn't be that way. Okay, we'll talk about that. What is happening that shouldn't be that way, and then really drive that point home. When I became a pool guy in 2001, fiberglass pools were built in such a way that they dug a hole in the ground and they set this fiberglass pool shell on a bed of sand and they backfilled around it with sand. Well, that's stupid, because sand settles and it's problematic later on. So we openly talked about how, no, you don't want sand as your base to your pool. You want gravel stone as your base because it goes down compacted. And we change the entire industry because of that. So in every industry, there are, you know, things that are wrong. There are standards that should be happening that don't happen. You need to pipe up. You need to talk about those things. So say what others aren't willing to say with video. Show what others aren't willing to show. There's many examples of this, but let me just give you a couple of this one of the. If. If anybody's selling the product, you should create review videos for your products. But here's the thing. Don't just say why the product is good. The most important part of a product review video, or even a company review video is when you discuss who that service or product is not a good fit for. Now, all of a sudden, they see it so much more clearly and they're like, holy cow, son of a gun. So that's an example of showing what others aren't willing to show. Don't just say, hey, we've got great people. It's our people that make us different. Everybody stinking says that it doesn't mean anything. Show us your people. Show us the training process that they have to go through to work for you. Show us your hiring process. Like all those things. Show the thing, but you gotta make it into a story. Gotta show the thing. So that's an example of that when it comes to selling in ways that others don't sell. Let's just give you a couple examples of this one of the ones that's the most obvious that blows my mind that people still don't do to this day. Daniel. Most salespeople just communicate with regular email. Text based email, Are you kidding me? It's the year 2025, y'all. So like my sales teams for my different companies, they do a lot of communication with video. One to one video. So much more effective in terms of making sure the person understands you and that you communicate clearly and that there's like this personal element to it. But yet how many Salespeople are using one to one video to communicate with prospects? Less than 10% right now. That's ridiculous, man. It doesn't make any sense. That's one example of selling in ways that others aren't willing to sell. Another example when it comes to selling is just speed. We call it the five minute rule when it comes to leads. But if you get back to leads within five minutes, you get a 900% increase in the possibility that they become an actual contact. A lot of companies are getting leads, but they never talk to the leads. Well, person got distracted because you followed up 48 freaking hours later. Of course you didn't talk to the lead. Five minutes should be your protocol for leads. That's a way to sell in a way that others aren't willing to sell. Allowing someone to choose their salesperson, that's a way to sell and a way that they're not willing to sell. Giving recommendation tools on your website. Let me give you an example. This one, Daniel. We sell fiberglass pools to my pool company. You go to my pool company website right now. Riverpoolsandspas.com There's a tool that will give you a recommendation as to whether or not a fiberglass, a concrete or vinyl liner pool is a better option for you. I literally every single day recommend to other people, don't buy fiberglass, buy concrete or vinyl instead. And I don't sell those two things yet. I'm literally telling them to buy them from my website. That's how you become the voice of trust. That's how you become that known and established brand and then finally be more human than others are willing to be. This really just means that your CEO, your leadership team, your salespeople, they're on camera. There's a bio video in your email signature that talks about you, that people can see you and your face, that you're really just putting your face out there, that your team is very involved on social media, that they're putting themselves out there building their personal brands. And you're helping them do it. These are all ways to be more human than others are willing to be.
- [28:23]
Daniel Murray
One question I have is, so if clicks and conversions aren't the full picture anymore, what should brands be actually doing to measure and track success?
- [28:35]
Marcus Sheridan
Bro, that's a good question. And we can't necessarily measure nearly as well as we want to. That's the reality of it. That's the, that is the nebulous of having a known brand. You know, they say oftentimes with B2B, it takes 7 times 7 touches for the person to actually say, okay, I'm going to have a conversation, seven touches. So where are those seven touches coming from? So measurement, yes. Is actually getting harder. Now. You can still measure with some of the traditional things like Google Ads, for example. Yes, measure that. Test your roi. Know, you know what your average, you know, cost for customer acquisition is like all those things. But we have to get to a place where, where we are a little bit more comfortable saying, I know that this is building my brand, but I don't know exactly how much money this is making me because we're losing that capability to measure. And I'm a big measurement guy, dude. I was all about, don't even do it if you can't measure it for about 20 years. And I've changed my tune on that because I'm evolving with the times.
- [29:52]
Daniel Murray
I mean, and that's going in the media mindset too.
- [29:56]
Marcus Sheridan
That's it, bro. That's it, that's it. And listen, I don't want to sit there and say, you know, it's about impressions and clicks and followers and all that stuff. But it's like, you know, there's a reason why, you know the, the new phrase for SEO is search everywhere optimization, right? Because it's like you want to be in as many places as you can be. You can't. When I did, when I took my swimming pool company, River Pools, and made it the most traffic swimming pool website in the world, I did that by focusing just on producing great articles that went on my website and doing some videos, some videos. I couldn't do that today and become the most traffic swimming pool website in the world. It's not going to work like that. Now. That strategy is still very helpful from a UX perspective. And there's a lot of reasons to do it still. But you're going to have to do more. I would have to do more today. I, I've got to be fully all in on social. I gotta be very, you know, focused on things like TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, whereas before they weren't a big deal to me as a marketer, I didn't have to do those. To build something extraordinary, today I have to be more omnipresent across the board.
- [31:09]
Daniel Murray
Yeah. And I was about to say that's. That's the real thing, which is the hardest thing to do because a lot of people don't have the time or energy to be omnipresent. But it's hard because that's what you have to be. So what do you tell people?
- [31:23]
Marcus Sheridan
Or the. Or the savvy. Right. Because it's like, you know, it's like you got to get really efficient. You know, you gotta be smart and say, okay, you know, I'm gonna take six hours on the first Monday of each month and I'm gonna shoot videos the entire time, and then we're gonna repurpose those and they're gonna go across the channels. I'm gonna get not just one videographer, I'm gonna get two videographers. You know, you look at freaking Alex Hormozi's of the world, he's got 20 people just working on his. On his personal brand, you know, that he is. That he's paying each month. But he has said, and you can see it, that he's getting the ROI there because they're doing some pretty extraordinary things. He is doing things that nobody's willing to do. And that's the thing. Marketers have played it safe for a long time, Daniel. A long time. And you can't play it safe and get extraordinary results as we go forward. And this is why I think there's going to be a lot of discord between the marketers and the leadership teams. Because a marketer inherently is going to know, like, we've got to be more risky, we've got to be more courageous. We've got to talk about things like pricing that nobody hasn't talked about in our space. We've got to be willing to do this. And then leadership's going to say, but. But I don't want you to do that yet. I need results and I need leads. And, you know, where's all my leads at? Why am I seeing revenue go down? Well, if you're completely risk adverse, that's.
- [32:46]
Daniel Murray
The reason why everything in life is a pendulum swing. And 50 years ago, you had to be the most bold, the most creative marketer because there was limited channels to.
- [32:59]
Marcus Sheridan
That's right.
- [33:00]
Daniel Murray
Stick out on. You had four channels on your TV or billboards. Or direct mail. Like you didn't really have many choices then we got so good with technology that we kind of could hack targeting, we can hack finding people. We have so much data now. Everybody has the hacking ability, everybody else has the targeting ability. Everybody. Now is a pendulum swinging to, hey, how can we be the most creative to stand out? How can we be different? How can we bold? But it is, it's going back to like the creativity pendulum swing where it was chilling, really. On you heard for at least 10 years or 15 years. Like data driven marketer. Data driven marketer. You always have to be a data driven marketer. And they never said, be creative marketer, be data driven.
- [33:49]
Marcus Sheridan
And now that's the number one thing I'm hiring for, is how creative is this person? Because the rest, especially like with AI, AI is going to do a lot of that other stuff. But, man, today I need creatives. I need people that are willing to think outside the box, to not follow the rules they've been given. Right? That's to do something that really stands out. People that can create a curiosity gap. That's a great marketer today. And do you think they're teaching that in universities? Heck, no. Which is very, very problematic. Do you think leadership teams are really giving marketers the liberty, the agency, to be able to get super creative as a whole? They're not doing it. So, yeah, it's a, it's a quite a reckoning that's company coming. You know, marketers have to remember is like your entire career satisfaction rests on your ability to get a green light for your ideas, period. And if you can't get a green light for your ideas, one of two things needs to happen. Either A, you need to become an entrepreneur and then you have full control, or B, you need to go work for somebody that is going to allow you to be your best version of yourself. But you know, there's a lot of marketers out there, Daniel, that are like a stallion that are pent up in a fence and they can't run. And, and if a stallion can't run, eventually it dies or it jumps the fence. And so that's what's going to be happening with marketers. You got to be creative, you got to push the envelope, you got to break rules. That's where we're headed.
- [35:29]
Daniel Murray
Okay, I want to go into like a rapid fire little section.
- [35:33]
Marcus Sheridan
All right, rapid fire, Daniel. Let's do it.
- [35:35]
Daniel Murray
First thing that comes to mind, what's the most overrated marketing strategy right now?
- [35:42]
Marcus Sheridan
Man, this one is a little Bit of a struggle for me, but I would probably say traditional SEO.
- [35:52]
Daniel Murray
That'S a hard thing to. Hard pill to swallow for a lot of people.
- [35:55]
Marcus Sheridan
Yes, yes, it is.
- [36:00]
Daniel Murray
What is one brand that is just absolutely crushing with trust building?
- [36:06]
Marcus Sheridan
Oh, the most obvious one is Liquid Death. You want to talk about a company that is a rule breaker, you get into the beverage space and that's a very competitive space now. They're like the second most followed beverage in the world on social media. And I was watching an interview with their head of marketing. Their creative team can fit in one vehicle. He said, one vehicle. So what they did though is they broke all the rules. They said, we're not going to market this like freaking water. We're going to market it like an energy drink slash alcoholic beverage and we're going to have an edge about it. It's not going to look like boring, stinking Aquafina, you know what I mean? And so this was all risky, but to me it's way more risky to do things the way they've been done up to that point. So Liquid Death continues to impress the living daylights out of me because they're mastered storytellers. They are a media company, they're lean, they're very, very like real time in terms of how they can do things in their campaigns. They don't have to make 10 phone calls at 10 different agencies to do crap for them like they do it internally. Ballers, Liquid Death.
- [37:21]
Daniel Murray
What's the biggest trust killer in marketing?
- [37:26]
Marcus Sheridan
Yeah, I'm going to go back to the one when number one trust killer is when they can't find what they're looking for online. The number one thing they're looking for online is information about pricing. That's number one. It's not even close.
- [37:41]
Daniel Murray
What's an underrated platform for building trust?
- [37:45]
Marcus Sheridan
I mean, I think for B2B. I think LinkedIn is actually very underrated still from a B2B perspective, I think you can crush on B2B and do very, very well. I've developed a massive, massive amount ofTrust on LinkedIn and as a speaker because I've just been so radically just like honest with my thoughts on that platform.
- [38:08]
Daniel Murray
What's A one bold move you'd love to see more brands make?
- [38:15]
Marcus Sheridan
I would go back to that obsession with self service that they create some type of like self configurator tool where the person can build it themselves. They don't have to talk to someone that they have some type of self pricing tool that they can get a pricing estimate without talking to someone that they, you know, they can schedule who they want to work with, like anything like that, that gives them more control. I think that is so, so smart, so forward thinking. I think that is absolutely massive.
- [38:44]
Daniel Murray
Two more questions for you. What is the most powerful marketing lesson you've learned?
- [38:50]
Marcus Sheridan
It's dumb not to dumb it down. And so your goal as a marketer is not to sound smart. Your goal is communion with your audience. That's why communion and communication, they have the same root word. And so instead of trying to impress your audience, are you saying it in such a way that they're nodding their head and they're saying, this makes so much sense, it's dumb not to dumb it down.
- [39:16]
Daniel Murray
And lastly, I ask everybody this question, but what is a marketing hill?
- [39:21]
Marcus Sheridan
You would die on that we're not different businesses, that we're all in the same business, which is the business of trust. And those that think they're different have another thing coming.
- [39:40]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I mean trust, I mean trust is the new currency now. I mean, before we were more in the attention economy, Trenton was the currency. Now you need attention and trust, which is like, yes you do. You need both to win. So, and lastly, where can people find you your book and all that you.
- [40:02]
Marcus Sheridan
Want to go to? Endlesscustomers.com folks. Endlesscustomers.com you can pre order the book. It's out the second week of April and you get a bunch of freebies goodies when you pre order the book. So check it out. Endless customers.com make sure you connect with me on LinkedIn because I'm an awesome follow on LinkedIn, so find me on LinkedIn. You can also email me marcusarcasserdin.com well.
- [40:24]
Daniel Murray
Thank you so much for coming on sharing this. I know there's a lot more that we could have talked to because you read a whole book about this topic. So thank you but I appreciate it.
- [40:37]
Marcus Sheridan
My pleasure.
- [40:41]
Daniel Murray
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.