The Bacon Podcast with Brian Basilico | CURE Your Sales & Marketing with Ideas That Make It SIZZLE!

Episode 995 – Let’s Do The Time Warp Again

“Time Warp” is one of the most recognizable songs from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It was created as a time filler for the stage play but has exploded in popularity and become a central part of audience participation during film screenings and live performances. When the movie came out in 1975, things were very different. People read newspapers, listened to the radio, and watched TV to get the news. Newspapers were themselves a Time Warp. The news was generally a day old, printed at night, and delivered by morning. Social media started out as a way for communities and news organizations to reach their audiences again. In its heyday, Twitter let you (the user) choose or restrict who and what you wanted to follow. Facebook and Instagram let you choose who you see and follow. The time warp happens when the algorithms feed you old information. Looking closely at your feed, you will see posts from hours, days, months, and years ago. Even though news and sports have been about what’s happening now, posts show me things that have happened before! This is part one of a series. Over the next few weeks, I will show you some tools and techniques that you can use to overcome these challenges. While social media is still a valid and attractive tool for business, you will want to use it with your eyes wide open. Their goal is to extract money for attention. Your goal is to use that attention to make money. Profit is the motive in both cases, but you must make more than you spend to see a profit.

Episode 994 – That One Thing… The Price Of Eggs

Have you seen the price of eggs? I have not, but I hear it’s high. It is a battle cry for those who go to the grocery store and see that their cart has less, yet they are paying more. My wife loves carrot cake. Recently, there was a recall of carrots. I wonder if that is why I am paying $6 for one slice instead of an entire cake. We all are looking for that one thing: to get people’s attention and keep them engaged long enough to learn something and maybe even change their point of view. I am trying to convey the idea (the one thing) that complex problems rarely have simple messages or solutions. Audiences are looking for that one easy thing that will rock their world and make them wealthy and successful. Times change, people change, businesses change, and AI will accelerate this change. What has not changed is that “Businesses do not do business with other businesses… People do business with people!” But have you seen the price of eggs lately?

Episode 993 – It’s Time To Get To Work

Back in the 1960s, the TV program was called The Twilight Zone. It was an anthology series that explored fantasy, science fiction, horror, and psychological thriller elements. In today’s complicated new marketing and media world, it can feel like we are living in a Twilight Zone. Marketing is about getting people to become aware and engaged and building trust. If you work in a vacuum, then your messages are delivered more organically to the recipient. But when you try to use a delivery platform like a social media or search platform, your message has additives of other content surrounding it and the timing as to how and when it’s delivered. We are in the part of the business year that is like another Twilight Zone. It’s the two months between Halloween and New Year’s Day. If you are in the consumer market, you are primed for people to be in a good mood and spend a lot of money on themselves and gifts for others. If you are in the business-to-business market, you are trying to finish the year strong while the people you sell to are winding down. No one can predict what 2025 will be like for business. AI will continue to grow in power and popularity, but how will your clients and audience use and adapt to it?

Episode 992 – The Anatomy of Trust

If you watch broadcast TV, I am sure you are happy the election is over and all we have to watch now are pharmaceutical and Christmas commercials. One of the interesting things I heard in post-election analysis was that a billion dollars was spent on TV ads. At the same time, the most decisive information was distributed via free-to-access websites and apps. This was described as paywall and non-paywall media. I never really thought about that but it makes sense. It becomes a matter of trust. Voters trusted without needing journalistic and regulatory confirmation that the information was accurate or even true. That works for elections, but you cannot take trust that lightly in business. Like a human body, trust is a complex system with some essential parts, needs, and truths. It has a brain, digestive system, lungs, and a heart. The body is a system, and the brain, the stomach, the lungs, and the heart all need each other for the body to function and survive. Trust in business is the same thing. It takes thinking, seeing, and feeling to ensure your business relationships are built on respect and trust. They need to be fed with consistent quality information, thought leadership, and a dash of advice. You must constantly breathe new life into relationships while expelling the negative. It also takes heart to feel and empathize with how a relationship is mutually beneficial and not merely transactional.

Episode 991 – Getting Personal

AI has been part of our culture for a long time. Think about the movies that have predicted where we are now. Although this is Hollywood and entertainment, we have realized most of this already: 2001 = Self-Driving Vehicles Matrix = VR Games and Headsets Her = ChatGPT, Siri, Alexa, and more impressive versions coming soon The biggest thing holding AI back or impeding it’s progress is it knowing who it’s talking to. Personalization will need to go way beyond what information is available on the Internet. What it will need (and what you want to do with your marketing) is called Hyper-Personalization. The problem with data is that it constantly changes. A real-life example is trying to do something very old-school: sending US Mail to customers. Chances are, you have a database or CRM where the records are old. In no way, shape, or form am I saying that digital marketing (social and email) wastes time and money? I can tell you that human-to-human interaction will increase interactions with your digital presence. Humans are complex, fickle, and emotionally charged beings. It takes just being there as another human being to build that trust again and again, as needed.