- So I've been looking into my crystal ball
to see what business and marketing trends
are gonna deliver the best results this year.
That's a baseball.
And I've come across some things
that are pretty obvious,
and others that are making me
rethink my entire marketing strategy,
like how some people claim that
robots and artificial intelligence
are trying to take over the world.
- I'll keep you warm and safe in my people zoo.
- While new technologies like ChatGPT
have burst onto the scene and made quite the commotion,
that doesn't mean that artificial intelligence
is trying to take over the world, right?
Well, let's find out now in this special episode
of "What's hot, what's not,
what you should be doing but might have forgot."
Starting with trend number one,
the rise of the personal brand.
Let's play a game,
and take three relatively well known people
all at the top of their respective fields
in order to see if you can guess
what they all have in common.
First, Elon Musk, the outspoken owner of Tesla,
Space-X, and now Twitter.
Next, Kylie Jenner, who became a billionaire
at the age of 21 through her company Kylie Cosmetics.
And finally "Bill Nye The Science Guy,"
scientist, educator, and defender of the bow tie.
- Wow! - Well, if you happened
to see the title of this section
just a few seconds ago then I'm guessing
you already know that the answer
to the question of what they all have
in common is their personal brands.
But more importantly is how they've used
their personal brands to help them achieve their goals
by creating and sharing content
around their ideas, and insights, and stories,
and behind the scenes glimpses
into their lives, beliefs, activities, and missions.
And that, my friend, is powerful stuff.
Especially in today's age where the general public
has become more skeptical and cynical
than ever before about big brands,
and big business, and giant faceless mega-corporations.
But I hear you, what if you don't want
to be on camera all the time
sharing your deepest and most innermost secrets?
(pen scratching)
Or you hate the idea of broadcasting
every minute of every single day
for the whole world to see,
opening yourself up to judgment,
and to criticism, and to just plain old mean comments.
(notification whistling)
Well, I've got good news,
you don't have to share it all,
because there's another way, a better way.
So let me walk you through that now.
You see, there's a lot of misconceptions
and bad advice out there
about what it really takes to build
a solid and successful personal brand.
I'm talking about the advice to do everything,
and be everywhere, and to expose
every single part of yourself at all times, no exceptions.
(water splashing)
But none of that is true anymore,
if it even ever was,
and there is no one size fits all approach
to creating the perfect personal brand,
because spoiler alert, a personal brand is personal.
Which means you get to decide
what you wanna share, and what you wanna talk about,
and just how much you wanna open yourself up.
For example, you may not know and may not care
that I'm married with four kids and have a dog.
How I enjoy long walks out in nature,
on the beach or through the forest.
And why the reason that I work so hard
is because I'm trying to justify my value
as a human being to myself,
and I'm also deathly terrified of ending up
at the end of my life and looking back
and having this feeling that
I didn't fulfill my potential,
and I wasted my life and time here on this planet.
Oh, I've said too much.
That said, if sharing that kinda thing
is your jam, then go for it.
The big takeaways here though are that
number one, building a personal brand
is one of the best things
and one of the most valuable assets you can have,
as a business owner, an entrepreneur,
a marketer or a creator.
And number two, it's okay to stay in your lane
and talk about things that you're comfortable with,
that you enjoy talking about,
and most importantly of all,
things that by sharing
enable you to help more other people.
Help more other people?
Help other more people.
Help other more other people.
Because that's the name of the game,
because the more value that you provide
and the more people that you provide it to,
the greater that you will be rewarded in exchange.
It's just how things work.
It's kind of like a universal law.
I've got another important trend
to share with you later in this video
that's gonna give you specifics
on exactly what kind of content
you wanna be making to build your personal brand,
so make sure to stick around for that.
Next though is a trend that
you're definitely gonna wanna double down on right now,
and it's something that has the potential
to turn your side hustle or your startup
into a six figure business.
Your six figure business into a seven figure business.
Or your seven or eight figure business
into a billion dollar global empire.
So let me share that with you now.
All right, that last game we played together was fun,
so let's play another.
This time, see if you can guess
what "The Hustle" worth $27 million dollars,
"Morning Brew," worth $75 million dollars,
and Agora Publishing, worth a jaw dropping
$1 billion dollars, all have in common.
Well, if you guessed that
they were all newsletter businesses,
then you guessed right, my friend.
And as big and impressive as numbers
like 27 million, and 75 million,
and $1 billion dollars actually are,
this really shouldn't come as a surprise.
After all, newsletters are still one of the top ways
that people like to get information,
hear from brands, stay connected,
and engage with interesting people and content.
And it makes sense from a business perspective too.
First off, as great, and as powerful,
and as important as having
a social media marketing campaign is,
it's also kinda like building your house
on rented land, in that neither you nor I own YouTube,
or Facebook, or Instagram, or TikTok,
unless there's something you're not telling me.
So those platforms are free
to do whatever they want, whenever they want,
whether through an algorithm update,
a policy change, or a complete overhaul
of the entire platform.
Next, when it comes to cost effective
marketing strategies that are able to deliver
just a whole boatload of returns,
well, email marketing is one of the cheapest
strategies to get started with,
and often reports a positive ROI,
or return on investment, of 38 to one.
Meaning, one dollar in, 38 back.
Not a bad deal.
And finally, starting an email newsletter
is one of the easiest marketing strategies
to get started with, especially when compared
to say something like building out
an entire marketing funnel,
or running a complete paid advertising campaign.
And all of that is why I'm happy
to get to introduce you
to the sponsor of today's video, GetResponse.
Whether you're just getting started in marketing,
or you've been at this whole business game
for a while now and are looking to build
more advanced marketing campaigns,
GetResponse can help.
GetResponse is an email marketing
and marketing automation software
that helps marketers and business owners
create automated marketing and email campaigns,
and save a whole lot of time doing it
by automating repetitive tasks
and letting the software do the heavy lifting for you.
For example, with GetResponse,
you can create an entire customer journey
directly within the tool,
and you can deliver hyper-personalized messages
to leads because of automated lead scoring and tagging.
You can create signup forms and popups
which will allow you to turn your website visitors
into leads for your business.
You can save time and resources
by using pre-built workflows for your campaigns,
or if you're a bit of a control freak like I am,
well, you can build your own custom automation from scratch.
Not only that but you can also send
automated emails to all new subscribers
and nurture them with relevant offers
and create conversion funnels
that put all your marketing efforts on autopilot.
So, how much does this cost then?
Well, with GetResponse's freemium plan,
you get everything you need to get started,
including email marketing, a landing page,
signup forms, and popups all for the one-time
low price of completely free.
So make sure to check out the link
in the descriptions below right after this video.
And with that said, let's dive into this next trend now,
which is all about automation,
and using the power of AI,
and a little bit of strategic thinking
to free up hours from your day,
while at the same time getting you far better results.
When it comes to marketing automation,
there is almost no limit to the number of things
that you can automate in order to get them
off your plate or to get them done faster.
Of course, there's the obvious things
like automatically delivering digital downloads,
sending email newsletters and drip campaigns,
or following up with new leads,
new clients, or new customers.
But there are also some pretty snazzy pants things
you can do to really take your marketing to the next level.
For example, you can automate chat bots
on your website or social media
in to help guide new visitors
and leads in the right direction.
And you can automate the writing
of these messages through software like ChatGPT.
You can automate lead qualification
and lead scoring in order to figure out
which prospects are engaging with your content
and worth reaching out to,
and which ones are taking your stuff
and putting it straight in the trash.
And you can even use AI powered avatars
to act in your place just in case
you wanna take a break to go grab a coffee or something.
Hey my friend, Adam here,
and today I want to talk to you about marketing.
Okay, that last one, that was a bit creepy.
The point is though if there's a repetitive,
or boring, or mundane task in your marketing,
the odds are pretty good that someone out there
has figured out some kind of automated solution
in order to take care of it for you automatically,
which in turn gives you more free time
to focus on what matters most,
like creating more content and becoming a media machine.
Which is the subject of the next trend
and the one that I'm probably the most excited
to talk about, so let's dive into that now.
Last year we saw the rise and domination
of what we now know as short form vertical videos.
Now the name short form vertical videos
is a bit of a mouthful,
so I've been working pretty hard
to try to come up with a new name for them,
but so far, nothing seems to be catching on.
How about shorties?
No?
Maybe verties?
No?
I know, how about shorticals?
On the bright side though,
whatever you wanna call them,
one thing is clear, these things work
and you can find them on Facebook
and Instagram as Reels, on YouTube as Shorts,
and TikTok as TikToks.
And if I was a gambling man,
I'd be putting all my money
on the other social media platforms
making space for these shorties in the coming months.
Still no, hey?
Of course like all things,
there is a right way and a wrong way to do this,
so here are a few quick tips
to help you get the absolute most from your shorties
First, keep them, well, short.
Aim for around 15-30 seconds to start with,
and see how those work for you
before trying longer 30 to 60 second videos.
Next, do everything you can to make it
as engaging as possible
right from the very first second,
and don't let off the gas until after the video is over.
This also means making sure
not to let your video slow down at the end,
but keep things rolling right up
until the very last second
to avoid having someone leaving early
when they sense that the good stuff is over.
Also, add interesting captions along the way,
not just the words you're saying,
but if there are other words,
or pictures, or emojis,
or elements that you want to draw someones attention to.
This kind of content likely isn't going anywhere
anytime soon so spending a bit of time
watching other's content, looking at trends,
and hashtags, and topics,
and music is gonna go a long way
and could pay off for months or maybe even years to come.
And to help you get even better results
not just from your shorties,
as well as all your other marketing,
I've linked up a video right here
with some of my best marketing tips,
tricks, tools, and strategies
to help you make this your best year in business yet.
So make sure to check that out now
and I'll see you in there in just a second.