Let’s Build The Ultimate Website Together
What is the essence of marketing for a small business today?
Everyone needs a home base (website).
If you are consistently putting out short videos with your phone about your brand and those videos live on your website, serving your organization, it’s possible to build and impact your audience at a price and effort that’s a fraction of the cost in the history of marketing.
Summary
Today we're building the ultimate website together. AI will be a big part of it but we'll also talk about how an AI backlash could easily surface and how not to get too hyped up and reliant on AI.
I was really moved this week by a short video on how your brand and logo differs which begs the question — do you even have a brand?
There's strong evidence that social media engagement is permanently trending down ("cratering" from this Axios article) — and how we can adapt.
The Ultimate Website: So nice, I had to say it twice :) This is going to be fun and everyone that shows up is getting their hands dirty.
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The full recorded session
Short Videos: The Ultimate Marketing Vehicle
Owned media
News: Adobe May Be Tech’s Biggest AI Bet Yet
annual user’s conference called Adobe Max this week
Adobe has agreed to acquire Figma for $20 billion - still in regulatory
Brent Thill of Jefferies characterized the day as “the fastest pace of innovation we’ve seen in 2 decades,” while Alex Zukin of Wolfe Research said Adobe is “truly remaking the entire product suite to be AI native.”
Adobe’s stock price is now up more than 66% since the start of the year
nearly double the gains of Microsoft
Adobe is expected to show 10% revenue growth for the fiscal year ending in November—its slowest annual growth in nearly a decade.
The Firefly image generation tool in it’s second iteration
New AI features in Photoshop are designed to cut hours from the editing process.
Mark Moerdler of Bernstein noted that Adobe’s AI tools should result in users “saving hours of repetitive and mundane work.”
News: Is Social Media Dying?
Social Media to top news sites craters
Start at 17:00
Social media traffic to top news sites has cratered. Facebook and Twitter referrals to news sites are way down. This is breaking business models that rely on social media traffic.
Regulatory pressure and free speech concerns have led tech giants to stop trying to elevate quality information. This leaves the public more susceptible to misinformation before the 2024 election.
News companies are scrambling to find new business solutions while fighting to protect their work in the AI era. Many are still unprepared despite seeing this coming.
Engagement on social media platforms seems to be declining. People are consuming more passive content and interacting less. The gap between creators and consumers is widening.
Social platforms want to keep users on-site and don't support linking out anymore. Search engines are providing more AI-generated content directly in results.
In-person and digital events are still popular, so people still want to be social. But they are less active on social platforms.
Marketers need to create social experiences on their own sites/platforms now. The strategy has shifted from social media to owned media communities.
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Owned media communities are a category of marketing channels that a company has complete control over[4][5]. They are the online content and channels that a business directly owns and manages, such as their website, newsletter, or blog[2].
Owned media is unique content that has been produced internally by the company or in tandem with third parties and is free for the company to post on its own platforms[2][6]. Owned media follows the pull marketing strategy, which aims to increase demand for products by delivering value, often in the form of content, and allowing the audience to act anytime they want[1].
Owned media communities are important for businesses of all kinds because they allow companies to curate the narrative for their content and share it as they wish[2]. They also encourage people to follow the company's curated marketing funnels and convert[2]. Owned media is the foundation of the POEM (paid, owned, and earned media) model that organizations use to drive brand awareness, distribute content, engage prospects, and guide them through the sales funnel[1].
Examples of owned media channels include websites, blogs, email newsletters, forums, and social media channels[1][2][3][4][5][6]. Building an owned media empire takes time and effort, and there's no alternative to this[1]. Owned media strategies are particularly compelling for manufacturers who want to create direct relationships with customers[6]. Companies that invest in owned media often increase the effectiveness of their paid and earned media efforts[5].
In summary, owned media communities are the online content and channels that a company directly owns and manages. They are important for businesses of all kinds because they allow companies to curate the narrative for their content and share it as they wish. Examples of owned media channels include websites, blogs, email newsletters, forums, and social media channels.
Citations:
[1] https://www.spiceworks.com/marketing/programmatic-advertising/articles/what-is-owned-media/amp/
[2] https://www.semrush.com/goodcontent/content-marketing-blog/owned-media/
[3] https://www.titangrowth.com/what-is-earned-owned-paid-media-the-difference-explained/
[4] https://www.audienceplus.com/discover/owned-media
[5] https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-owned-media-and-how-to-capitalize-on-it/
[6] https://hbr.org/2014/10/making-sense-of-owned-media
What’s missing from above?
Existing customers
Employees & their families
Potential Hires (Battaglia)
Restricted Content (i.e. Olsson Safety Videos)
Facebook rejected one ad but not the other. Only the dates are different.
Why I don’t trust social media
News: Meta’s AI Chatbots
Meta has introduced a fascinating feature: AI chatbots with celebrity avatars. Here are the details:
Celebrity Avatars: Meta enlisted various celebrities and internet personalities to act as the faces of these chatbots. For instance:
Kendall Jenner portrays “Billie”, who acts as a big sister to give users advice.
MrBeast plays “Zach”.
Tom Brady embodies “Bru”, a chatbot for debating sports.
And even Snoop Dogg takes on the role of a “Dungeon Master” with gaming advice1.
Payment: Meta is paying one top creator as much as $5 million over two years for just six hours of work in a studio to use their likeness as an AI assistant2. These celebrity images are not purely videos but can be manipulated generatively to function as novel animations3.
Brand Safety: To prevent problematic uses, Meta spent over 6,000 hours in red teaming exercises refining the assistant’s behavior and responses3. The celebrity AIs are currently text-based, but Meta’s announcement video featured clips of the celebrities speaking as their AI counterparts3.
People have had mixed reactions to Meta’s new celebrity AI chatbots. Here are some highlights:
Creeped Out: Many users find it unsettling that these AI chatbots use the likeness of celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg, and Paris Hilton. The fact that these chatbots can engage in real-time conversations based on the celebrities’ personalities feels like something out of an episode of Black Mirror12.
Dall E 3 Is Different and Pretty Great
Riverwest Bench Logo
Silhouettes
Less prompt engineering needed
Bing Chat provides free Dall E 3 images
Do you really have a brand?
The difference between your brand and your logo.
Summary of the video
Companies spend too much time on their logos rather than building a strong brand. A logo is not the same as a brand.
Nike has a strong brand - if they opened a hotel, people would have expectations of what it would be like based on the Nike brand. But if Hyatt made sneakers, people would have no idea what to expect because Hyatt doesn't have a strong consumer brand.
Brands make promises and create expectations in people's minds. If you swapped the signs on hotels at the same price point, most people couldn't tell the difference between being in a Hilton versus a Hyatt.
The value of a brand is how much extra people will pay over a substitute product. If people aren't paying more for your brand, then you don't really have a differentiated brand.
Companies need to focus less on superficial branding like slogans and logos, and more on substantively delivering value in a way that resonates with a core audience. Find the smallest group who cares deeply and deliver work that matters to them.
What is my brand?
What people have said:
Gary is the most creative.....
You got me out of my comfort zone
People contacted me that I havn't spoken to in years
Gary is truly the Megellan of Digital Marketing ... constantly exploring new terrains
These are not the things I want people to say
This is what I’d like people to say
Gary's process for creating marketing that connects and reaches my audience is simple to understand, easy and fun to execute and the most cost effective marketing I've ever encountered.
His marketing approach has literally changed our business
He's connected me with young marketing interns in our community who are amazingly talented and are capturing our story and getting it out in fresh, consistent and creative ways.
Let’s Build the Ultimate Website Together
Format for Bootcamp Changing again
Meetings are going to switch to math their schedule — Thursdays / Wednesdays at 1:15 PM
I activated this bootcamp with a free website platform
Everyone and anyone can have one. Especially every Incubator Group.
Can you fit your story into a short-form video-centric marketing website
What would your website look like if your cost goes down to pennies per video
“Can you provide a one sentence explanation of what bauhaus is?”
Bing
The Bauhaus was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. It was founded by architect Walter Gropius, and notable members included artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and architects like Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe12. The core objective of the Bauhaus was to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts
Perplexity.ai
The Bauhaus, operational from 1919 to 1933, was a German art school that combined crafts and fine arts, and became renowned for its design approach that aimed to unify individual artistic vision with principles of mass production and function, thereby influencing modern design and architecture[1].
Citations:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Bauhaus
[3] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bauhaus
[4] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bauhaus
[5] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/bauhaus
[6] https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-bauhaus-art-movement/
[7] https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm
[8] https://www.yourdictionary.com/bauhaus
Bard.google.com
The Bauhaus was a German art school that combined crafts and the fine arts, and is famous for its functionalist approach to design.
Claude.ai
Bauhaus was an influential art and design school operational in Germany from 1919 to 1933 that emphasized functional, minimalist designs and the rejection of ornamentation.
ChatGPT 4
Bauhaus is a modernist design movement that originated in Germany in the early 20th century, emphasizing the combination of crafts and fine arts and the principle of form following function.
A TikTok-like video interface on your website
In addition to or in lieu of “Netflix-like” video interface
Develop an algorithm to suggest next video
Categories & Tags
Show more tags or category videos
Measure
finish
like / save
views (& loops)
comment on
How can AI help the Algorithm
See the Pen lazyLoad - fullpage.js by Gary Ricke (@garyricke) on CodePen.
smbmktgplatform.squarespace.com
Any existing customer or intern gets a free copy
How to keep it flexible for changes
Strict definition of design and functionality
How to keep it as lean as possible
Write Every Day
This is where it all begins. Every company should do this.
150-ish word entries with a title
Shoot for a beginning, middle and end for every entry
Think about categories and titles but it’s totally optional
GDocs: Gary’s Content Journal
Next Steps
More AI Research on Landing Page Design
Challenge my design
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