Jay Schwedelson: we are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode. We're all like long. We get in questions, we get in work questions, we get in ridiculous questions, and we try to tackle one of each. And if you wanna be an awesome human, you could submit a question.

Jay Schwedelson: You just gotta go to jay sch wetson.com. There's a button that says podcast, another one that says, ask us anything. And that's where we get our questions. So the stupid or more ridiculous, the questions the better. But before we get to the stupid ones. Not that they're stupid, they're amazing. Um, let's do the work question.

Jay Schwedelson: We got a question from Jesse, from San Jose. I think San Jose actually. Actually right near San Francisco where I'm headed to for inbound in a few days. That's the big event put on by HubSpot. You know, whenever I travel. First of all, I hate checking a bag, uh, but I'm going for such a long time that I have to check a bag and, uh, why are bags made so heavy?

Jay Schwedelson: There's no way you could fill up a bag of any size and not have it go over the limit because the bag itself is like 400 pounds. There needs to be a rule that a bag itself can't weigh something because what is the point of buying the bag? What am I talking about? What, what's the question? Sorry, Jesse.

Jay Schwedelson: Jay. We just had our internal meeting for our Q4 marketing offers. Are there any specific content formats or trends specific to this year that you think will generate an extra boost in performance that we should be thinking about? Excellent question. So let's break this down For business and then consumer and we'll even throwing some nonprofit for our nonprofit friends out there.

Jay Schwedelson: There are very, very specific things that are working. Now and in the coming weeks, and as we head into Q4 that are very different this year than other years, we cannot do what we always do. Oh, let's roll out our same offers that we do. Uh, this time of year. No, this year is actually different. You can't just be like, oh, scarcity and urgency and, uh, blah, blah, blah.

Jay Schwedelson: No, we have to understand why, why things are a little bit. Different this year, and especially not just this year, but this time of year. So first off, let's talk about business to business. What you wanna be thinking about right now. Okay. For all of your content, for your offers, you're trying to get people to download stuff, get into your nurture streams, all this stuff.

Jay Schwedelson: What you wanna be thinking about is 2026 content. Okay? That is the big shift after September 1st, we know, and I've talked about this before, that whatever the coming year is, in this case, 2026. If you have 2026 in the content title, it'll actually increase your download rate of whatever that content is on the business side, but over 30%, and it'll increase your webinar registration rate by over 25% if you include it in the title of your thing.

Jay Schwedelson: But beyond that. The content formats that are really crushing it. Heading into, um, the last portion of this year are big listicles. You know, we always think listicles are important, but listicles are more important than ever. They're doing actually better, uh, than ever. They side note. They happen to also be great 'cause they get picked up by all the AI tools quite a bit.

Jay Schwedelson: So listicles, you know, the 50 things every CMO should know, uh, the 30 campaign ideas, you can steal the nine mistakes to avoid now. The secret sauce is if you really wanna win the day, you just throw in 2026 into your listicle. The 50 things every CMO should know in 20 26, 20 25 is over the 30 campaign ideas you can steal for 2026.

Jay Schwedelson: The nine mistakes to avoid in 2026. The nine things every HR leader will do differently in 2026 and then beyond Listicles, its toolkits. Cheat sheets and playbooks. These are the content formats that are crushing it. You can't just call it a guide. You need to get a little bit creative like toolkit, cheat sheet playbooks now.

Jay Schwedelson: The thing ironically that is doing phenomenal, that I don't think enough, uh, companies are doing on the business side, then we'll get to consumer, is the word trend? Anything including the word trend 2026, trend deck 2026 trending Shifts Guide 2026 trending Toolkit. We all wanna know what is what, what's happening.

Jay Schwedelson: What is everybody else talking about? What is gonna be the thing? And actually including trend will give you about a 15% boost in, in engagement according to World Data Research. And then of course the the last one, which everybody does anyways, including ai and anything in the title of your content, the title of your webinar, if you include ai, you're going to get an additional boost by about 20%.

Jay Schwedelson: So the magic would be right. The AI trending 2026 report, you'll get a 5000000000% download, uh, rate if you were, if it's me or whatever. Anyway. Let's get into the consumer side. Now, the consumer side's very, very different this year. Big, big difference. You know, we used to always be about, uh, scarcity. Oh, this is the last one.

Jay Schwedelson: You gotta hurry up and get it, and blah, blah, blah. Right? The fear of missing out. That ain't this year. The big thing working right now in consumer. So this data from the last 60 days from World Data Research offers framed. Price will rise or seeing a 20% higher conversion rate than standard discount offers because of all the tariffs and uncertainty.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't care if you like the tariffs, don't like the tariffs meaningless to me, they're already baked into our Q4 in the holiday season and into pricing. Okay? So what we're all concerned about is our price going to rise and we have to tap into that for our offers. So when you frame your offers in, prices will rise.

Jay Schwedelson: Instead of just saying, whatever, discount, 20% off or whatever, you say today's price, tomorrow higher last day at this price, never this low. Again, your future self will pay more when you frame it in. Prices will rise heading into the next few weeks. At the end of the year, it is doing so, so well. 'cause you're tapping into the psychology of what we're all thinking about.

Jay Schwedelson: So don't just play the regular game of, you know, 20% off and blah, blah, blah. Or there's the, you know, last chance at selling out. Yeah, that will work. But you need to tap into what's really working. Alright? And let's throw in something for my nonprofit friends. Why not? You know, the other thing, tapping into the same idea for all the nonprofits that are out there, you wanna tap into what we're thinking about and what everybody knows is that it's gonna be harder for you to raise money this year.

Jay Schwedelson: You know, heading to Q4, that's a big time of year for you to get donations. We all know that. So you wanna be honest about it. You wanna frame it where it's talking about that this year might be harder. Where this year's harder. That's why we need you more or we can't keep up with rising costs without your help.

Jay Schwedelson: Rising costs won't stop us. If you stand with us, look, get people on board with what's really going on. Talk about the elephant in the room. Don't just ignore it. Okay, so that's some of the offers I would be thinking about. Let's get into the ridiculous portion of this podcast. It is called, since you didn't Ask, and we get our ridiculous questions in, and we got a question from.

Jay Schwedelson: Kevin from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Isn't that why they say Virginia is for lovers? What is that? I mean, I'm sure someone's gonna hit me up, be like, this is why they say that. But no, actually, like what is that actually? Like you could have a tagline for your state, but you really want Virginia's for lovers.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't even know if that's right. I feel like that's right. But anyway. Kevin, what's your question? Jay, it's football time. Are you a football fan and how much do you care? Uh, yeah, totally. Football, dude, I love sports. Uh, my teams of dolphins are actually horrible and I went to the University of Florida Go, so go Gators.

Jay Schwedelson: But I do have some issues with, with all things sports related, uh, number one. Sports are too long. Every sport is too long. Major League baseball is easily an hour too long. It's impossible to not be boring. If you, if you wanna lie to yourself and say it's not boring, that's fine, but you're actually a liar.

Jay Schwedelson: Baseball is boring. One hour's fine. A round of golf needs to be nine holes, not 18. It is out of control to play four hours of golf. It is so boring. It is so ridiculous. I don't care what you say. Football's the same thing. I love football, but we can shave an hour off we can. It's like, okay, it's a close game and there's two minutes left.

Jay Schwedelson: That two minutes takes 45 minutes at the end of the game, I'm like, what is going on? Speaking of. The other thing is I don't go to a lot of football games, but when I do, I'm always amazed at these people that, that the tailgating that people set up, I always like, I'm, I'm like, how do they do it? I can't even like, make eggs at my house without it being a disaster.

Jay Schwedelson: And these people are like making lobster tails out of their trunk and it's like Bobby Flays backyard. Is right there with the greatest barbecue setup I've ever seen. I can barely get out a pan without my entire kitchen falling apart, and these people are constructing this stuff. It blows my mind by the way the other fail, and now I'm gonna get a lot of heat.

Jay Schwedelson: Is when people are doing the tailgating and then they're drinking their face off at like, you know, 10 in the morning or whatever and like, yeah, let's crush 400 beers. I don't care if that's what you wanna do, whatever. But the bottom line is by halftime, those you feel like garbage. If you go hard at like 10:00 AM you feel like garbage.

Jay Schwedelson: Anybody who says otherwise, it's a liar. And by the end of the game you're like, get me home. I need to go home and be on my couch and pass out. What are we talking about? So yes, I do like football. Listen, you're awesome. I would appreciate two things. One, please register for Guru Conference if you, if you don't, you're a dork.

Jay Schwedelson: You are, because it's free, it's virtual. Nicole Kidman's gonna be there. It's the biggest email event in the world. It is Will run outta seats guru conference.com. And then the other thing is, uh, let's hang out on Instagram. I'm sharing a lot of stupid garbage on Instagram. You could find me at my full name at Jayson.

Jay Schwedelson: So, uh, yeah, hope you're awesome and keep it real.