Jay Schwedelson: We are back for what's up this week from the Do This, NOT That! podcast. This is our short episode where we break down what's going on in business and marketing and life, and then we still have our other episodes later in the week. So let's jump into it. What is going on with marketing stuff? So one of the biggest, I would say, trends in marketing right now is something called.

Jay Schwedelson: Preseason marketing. You know, all of us as marketers, we're always using urgency to drive everything. Two days left. Today's your last chance, whether it's for a webinar registration or a sale, whatever other nonsense you're doing. But preseason marketing is really, really growing and basically really bleeds out of the holiday.

Jay Schwedelson: So at the holidays, what preseason marketing means is, uh, people start selling, you know, Christmas decorations in the summer, earlier and earlier every year that people are promoting their. Offers, whatever they're business offers. Consumer offers, uh, donation offers for nonprofits just way earlier than they ever have.

Jay Schwedelson: And so we're seeing it now from some major marketers and there's something that, I'll give you a tactic that you can do that I think can radically change the performance of all of your marketing. But in general, this stack kind of blew my mind for Worldata research. Okay. Early access marketing. Across both business and consumer categories is up 35% year over year, early access marketing, meaning marketing tactics that are focused on early access.

Jay Schwedelson: As an example of that, Salesforce has their big annual conference called Dreamforce every year. So in the past, in 2025. Their event is in September, October, every year. Alright, in 2025. They really started pushing Dreamforce in April and May for 2026. They've already started early signups. Okay, we're in February.

Jay Schwedelson: They already launched this Coca-Cola. Another great example, just last week, okay. They rolled out their first phase of their World Cup promotions. It doesn't start until June. They already rolled it out. Everything is happening earlier and earlier and earlier. So I'll give you some secret sauce stuff that you could think about for your own marketing.

Jay Schwedelson: Let's talk about webinars. Really hard to get people to sign up for webinars these days. Okay. If you just, if you lean into webinar promotions with the concept of first two, first two, and I'll give you examples of exactly what it means, but first two, as your tactic to drive webinar registrations is actually increasing registrations by over 20%.

Jay Schwedelson: What does that mean? So when you go out and you market your webinar, you get out there early. What you say is the first hundred people to register, get on demand access, and you're like, wait a minute though, I wanna give everybody on demand access, and you can. So let's say on average, I'm making this up, that you normally only get about 50 people to register for your webinar.

Jay Schwedelson: You double that number, and then in your subject lines, in your promotions. You tell everybody the first hundred people to register will get on-demand access. What you are doing is you're creating this fomo, fear of missing out around getting that on-demand access. And people register early 'cause they wanna be in the first two, the first to register, get on demand access.

Jay Schwedelson: Now you wanna make it available for everybody. That's why you double the number. So if your number's number really 50 and you say the first a hundred, nobody knows how many people register for your webinar. Who knows how many people register for your webinar. You just double your normal number and this way you get a lot of early registrations.

Jay Schwedelson: Now you could do this in so many different ways, okay? You don't need to just do it as it relates to your webinar. Alright? Let's say you are putting on an event, you can use the concept of control. What do I mean by that? If you go out with your promotions, you say. Early registrants choose the session.

Jay Schwedelson: Order early registrants get to vote on potential speakers. Early registrants. Get access to the agenda. Draft first. You're giving people control if they register in the next two days, in the next three days by tomorrow. Using control to drive early action works so, so well. And you could also do it obviously on the consumer side early access locks in pricing.

Jay Schwedelson: On the nonprofit side, early supporters get listed as a founding supporter. If you're not using preseason marketing, you're really not leaning into the mindset, especially here in Q1, coming outta the holiday time. That is working so incredibly well. All right. Forget about that tactic. What else is going on out there?

Jay Schwedelson: Well, one of the other coolest things I saw that just came out this week is from Reddit. Reddit is doing, if you're not trying to test marketing, I don't care what category you're in and you're not looking at Reddit, we're doing this a lot in our agency. Reddit has so many cool new ad units, paid ad units that you can test for like 50 bucks.

Jay Schwedelson: It's nothing. They just rolled out a brand new ad unit this week called. Reminder ads. It's a super cool ad unit. You can just Google it, you know, Reddit reminder ads. And basically if you have an event that you're promoting, if you have a sale that you're promoting, whatever it is, it's this special ad unit that while you're on Reddit, you click a little button saying, remind me, and then instantly.

Jay Schwedelson: You actually will get a reminder, you'll get a notification, uh, of whatever it is that you need to be reminded about, and then the advertiser actually gets the lead. So Reddit is rolling out more and more cool ad units. Other things going on this week? Well, this kind of stinks. So Pizza Hut announced that they're closing 250 of their locations.

Jay Schwedelson: Um, I don't mean to be rude about Pizza Hut, but I haven't been to a Pizza Hut. In, I don't know, I, I'm gonna say 20 years. I don't know. That doesn't I, no problem with pizza chains. I like Domino's. Domino's, thin crust rocks. If you don't like Domino's thin crust. You don't know what you're talking about. I think Papa John's is extremely overrated.

Jay Schwedelson: It doesn't taste like pizza. I'm just saying it tastes weird. It's not bad. It just doesn't taste like pizza to me, and I haven't tried a pizza thing in a long time. Kind of feel like it might be gross. Am I wrong in saying that? I don't know. Never gonna get them as a sponsor. Facts. Um, all right. What's going on in pop culture?

Jay Schwedelson: That's totally irrelevant. So I know the big movie that's coming out is Wuthering Heights. Weathering Heights. Am I saying that right? Yeah. It's like a remake or whatever, and it's this whole love story movie, whatever, and it's got Margot Robbie. It's got Jacob Elordi. I always say his name. Elordi.

Jay Schwedelson: El Lordie, whatever his name is. He's the dude from Saltburn and Frankenstein, and I keep seeing the previews everywhere for Wuthering Heights. And my only issue with it is that. This takes place, I don't know, in like the Victorian era, like, I don't know, 17 hundreds or something like that. Why is everybody hot?

Jay Schwedelson: Why is everybody good looking? Why does everybody look like they just got done doing like, you know, SoulCycle or some sort of fitness class, like they just finished there going their Pilate studio. Was everybody hot in the 1700? It's just like, can they have some people walking around that look like garbage that like look like they probably haven't showered in a month and they're kind of gross.

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause I feel like that's probably was the real vibe. There's no way everybody looked like Margot Robbie and, and Jacob Elordi, whatever the hell his name is. I don't know. What am I talking about? Who even knows? Um, the thing I'm most hyped for this week that's coming out on Friday is a new show on HBO called Neighbors.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay? This is a reality show. I like all reality shows. This one's great though. The premise is, it is all about bizarre and dramatic. Feuds between neighbors that like spiral out of control. This seems fantastic to me. First off, I've lived in my home that I'm in right now for 17 years. Okay? I can tell you right now, I do not know my neighbor's names.

Jay Schwedelson: I have like two across the street and then one on either side of me. I know one person in two of the houses. I don't know the names of either person in two of the other houses. 17 years I've lived in my house. What does that mean? I think it means I'm a weirdo. How is that possible? I mean, I walk outside, I do the old wave.

Jay Schwedelson: Hello, how are you? But I don't actually, I try very hard. Not to talk to my neighbors other than, hello, how are you? Because I really don't care and I don't want to know what's going on with them. And I make up stories in my head of weird stuff that I think is going on in their homes. Um, and if they do listen to this, well awkward.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't know what else to say. Super awkward, but there's no chance. Um, so I'm excited about the show Neighbors. Is coming out Friday. What is going on? Anyway, listen, you would be amazing. We, uh, go to JaySchwedelson.com. I wanna work with you. My team does consulting and marketing and all sorts of nonsense. Go to JaySchwedelson.com, drop me a note there.

Jay Schwedelson: Let's hang out, let's do stuff. You're awesome. See you the next one.