Why The Mid-Term Elections Are Important For Marketers

Analyze the midterm elections from a marketing perspective. Learn how recent political shifts impact your industry strategy. Eric Siu breaks down the recent midterm elections, focusing on why the Democrats secured wins in the House and Senate. This analysis is designed for marketers and business owners who need to understand how political outcomes influence the broader economic landscape. We examine the underlying factors that shaped these electoral results and what they mean for future campaign planning. By applying a marketing lens to these midterm elections, you can better anticipate shifts in consumer sentiment and market trends. Understanding this voter behavior helps refine your overall business strategy as the political climate evolves. Subscribe for daily marketing insights, and let me know in the comments how you think these election results will impact your industry. 0:00 Marketing Lessons from Political Campaigns2:07 Focusing on Customer Pain Points5:52 The Power of In-Person Relationships8:09 Refining Your Pitch for Higher Conversion10:51 Networking at the Highest Level

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot Starter Plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the Starter Plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com. So Neil and I, we're not gonna get political here, but let's talk about why the Democrats won, right? So from the midterm, so this is, it's like a political topic, but I wanna talk about it from a marketing standpoint, right?

• 0:45Speaker 00

  And so the way I think about it, so Democrats, so we had these midterms in the United States, okay? So Democrats, they swept, right? So they won, I think Neil, correct me if I'm wrong here, but they won, they took the seats in what?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Pretty much everything.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Senate, right?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  House, the Senate, they pretty much won everything.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, which makes it harder.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  And some of the people, like in Georgia, some of these people running were spending hundreds of millions of their own money and the people who are Democrats that didn't spend any of their own money and barely had any cash, won. You look at Texas, Elon spent hundreds of millions of dollars for Republican candidates. The people who barely had any money just swept. And Texas is usually a right-leaning state, it turned blue, which is very rare.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  They haven't had, I don't, I think it's since like 1988 or something like that. They haven't had like a blue governor or like a blue, it wasn't a blue state, right? Which is, which is crazy. So my point of saying this is that not to be, it's not a political podcast, right? But the reason the Democrats won, the reason they beat the Republicans, is because, one, their message made a lot of sense. It's like, you know what? Price, gas prices are too high right now, prices are too high in general right now. We're gonna, we're gonna make sure that that comes down, right? By the way, you know, all these other things that are happening right now, like, like, here's the thing. The Republicans were talking about, you know, we're building, you know, AI progress over here. This is happening, you know, we're building these data centers that are, which is good, right? But the, the average person just cares about getting their bills paid.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  And so your messaging needs to be tied to the vast majority of the people that are gonna be voting. And what happened is, you looked at all these districts, like, like, the last one Trump won, like, it showed all these people moving right. This time it showed all these blue arrows moving to the other side. Everyone became like more, moved to the more Democrat side. So it's just, it's just a messaging thing. And I think they need, they need younger, more vibrant candidates if they wanna try to win next time. But anyway, not political advice, not trying to be political, but it's a marketing thing, it's a messaging thing. Go ahead, Neil.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when you think about it from a marketing aspect, a lot of the Republicans were talking about the future, technology, you know, like AI and all this kind of stuff. Some of them were talking about, hey, we have a big deficit of all these billions of dollars, we wanna get it into control, it's unsustainable for the future. All right? So just imagine you being an end consumer or an individual. And if your issues, yes, you may look at the $40 trillion that the US government is in debt, or whatever that massive number is. If you can't get your bills paid and you're struggling with food costs and rent costs, do you really care if they have $40 trillion in deficit or $45 trillion?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Or if there's this AI boom, which could potentially negatively affect your job? Because you're hearing all these AI people talking about, hey, you know, it'll replace a lot of jobs and you'll see it in the future. And then Microsoft doing voluntary buyouts. And I believe Google announced that and Canva just laid off a large chunk of their workforce. And you're seeing all these layoffs. So would you, from a marketing message, want people to talk about the future 10, 20, 30 years from now? How we're gonna win or beat China? Or do you want people to just talk about how you could pay your bills tomorrow? How if they stop a lot of this AI stuff, your job is more protected and you're more likely to still have money and still have a job? You're gonna go with the stuff that's related to you.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  And this is where I think people get it wrong in marketing. And I'll give you an example of this, that's, you know, if you're an agency owner, that you can use.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  If I'm pitching a customer on SEO, or you're pitching your boss on SEO because you wanna do more SEO, or even if one of your employees wants to spend more on it. It's not about ranking higher on Google or getting more clicks or getting more leads. It is actually you, as a business owner, just want more revenue. Or you, your boss, just wants more profit and more revenue. So if you're pitching, I can rank you higher than a competitor, I can get you more visibility on ChatGPT than a competitor. If people don't understand what it's gonna do and how it's gonna economically benefit them, no one gives a crap. You may be able to convince some of the early movers and you may be able to get a really, really tiny percentage of their budget, but most people don't give a crap.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  What they really care for is, how's it gonna impact my bottom line? Because the more profit they make and the better they perform, they're more likely to get promotions, raises, you know, and just do better overall with an organization. That benefits them. So when we are doing marketing pitches for our clients, especially on the enterprise end, we try to all relate to bottom-line numbers and knock it out of the park. Because if you can make them look good, they look good for the corporation that, you know, that ended up, eventually hired you. They'll get raises or promotions, or they'll go to another company and they'll bring you along with them too.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  It's all, with marketing, it's all about focusing on the benefit, not necessarily focusing on individual things. You gotta focus more on big picture.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  I have a question for you, a random question. How many clients do you think you see per year in person?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  If you were to throw a number on it?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  I don't know, at least like three, four a week.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  In person?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  So yeah, so that means each month, right? You're, that's up to three, four a week. So you're 16 a month, 12 to 16 a month, right?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, some months I'll see like 20, 30, December, November will be slower. So I'm just.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  So if I'm, I just call it like 150 to 180, something like that, right? And the reason I'm even asking Neil this question is because AI or not, no matter what we like, like, it's a relationship business, right? People wanna see you, people wanna do business with you, they wanna talk to you, they want, they wanna dine and dine with you. That's just, that's just how it is, right? And that's how this, a lot of this is too, it's a lot of like, hey, let's go grab a coffee here. Hey, let's go grab, like, let's go grab some food, right?

• 6:50Speaker 00

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• 7:33Speaker 00

  Real quick, if you wanna acquire customers faster and more efficiently this year with the latest strategies and tactics, then check out singlegrain.com, that is my ad agency, again, www singlegrain.com. Check it out, and if it seems like a fit, we'll get in touch and help you with a free marketing plan.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the number's actually probably higher. When I'm in LA, I don't see clients as often. When I'm on the road, I see them very frequently. So this week is Mexico and Bogota. Last week was Milan and Madrid. I think in Milan, I saw maybe six, seven clients that I met up with, like one-on-one, eating, conversing, presenting, going to their offices. Madrid, I think it was either five, maybe six, I know it was five at least, though. So you're talking about in that one week, I saw at least, call it 10, 11, 12 clients in person.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  And I don't count just seeing someone at a conference and saying hi as really meeting a client in person. I'm talking about like, sitting down 30 minutes, hour plus, it's usually an hour plus, giving them attention, understanding issues, helping them out, all that kind of stuff.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  And then this week, from Mexico City to Bogota, I don't know, maybe I'll see eight, nine this week. So call it in the last two weeks, let's just round and use a simple number, 20 clients that I saw?

• 9:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, so let's just call this, right? Like, it's, it's basically 250 hours, like, let's say 200 meetings, and then I'm just multiplying by 1.25. So let's call it 250 hours Neil's spending with clients a year, and that's 10 days, basically, right? That's 10, like, full days, by the way. Anyway, I just, I was curious. So I wanna go back to the messaging piece real quick, and then we can, we can move on from, from, you know, these, these topics, right? So what's interesting, Neil, I was sitting at one table for one of these needs and leads, and we had two marketing agencies there, me and someone else, right? And what's interesting is, when we were going around the table, like, you have to kind of pitch, you know, what you're looking for, right? So the other person was like, yeah, you know, we're a marketing agency and we'd like to offer you a free audit, right? And how many people do you think were interested in that?

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Good chunk.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  One or two people, ten, one or two people out of ten. Now, let me give you. One or, yeah, exactly, right? So then it goes to me, right? I'm like, yeah, you know, we're, we're a marketing agency, but yeah, we've been building these, these AI workflows and you know, I totally think marketing is F right now. And you know, these workflows, they help you scale G E O and S E O at, at, you know, high quality. Um, and then also helps you scale, uh, you know, ad creative as well. We also have another workflow that can scale, you know, uh, cold email infrastructure. Um, and we also have another one that helps, you know, help you find, uh, helps you find AI native talent. And we're just looking for a couple of people to, you know, uh, try it out and pilot it right now. And, uh, that's, that, that's the ask, right? And of ten people, it was like eight or nine people that raised their hands, right?

• 10:33Speaker 00

  So my, my point is you have two different market, similar business, two market agencies, but it was a different, different messaging and different offer, right? Um, and you just had to position it just a little bit differently and your conversion rate goes way higher.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause it's a similar type of offer. It's just the wording on how, what was used.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  It's a free audit. It's the same shit, so.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  It's the same thing, cause you're gonna audit workflows, you're gonna look at how they're doing creative, you're gonna look at how they're doing G E O, S E O, it's the same thing.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  And one more thing I'll say, Neil, uh, like I would, cause I would get to test this, right? Cause I, I did like sixteen tables. So one table I tested, I was like, I just, I said, hey, guys. I just focus on the, the, the, the talent pot, right? I was like, hey, guys, um, we have a talent workflow right now that just focuses on, on hiring AI native talent. Because I believe that, you know, the top A players are AI native today, right? And they're all nodding their heads, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right? Um, that entire table, they, they, they all raised their hands and it's like a three, four, five, five is like, I really want this. I really need, like, I can really help you. They're like all fives across the board. And you know what's gonna happen, Neil? They're gonna look for that, but the team's gonna say, well, by the way, we also do marketing too. Would you like to have a marketing audit with that? It's like, would you like to have fries with that?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, this is, it's crazy to think about. Um, question for you. The event you were at was a Y P O event, so you had to be in Y P O to attend, I'm assuming?

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Okay, so, so there was no non-Y P O, so a lot of people listening can't go unless they figure out how to join Y P O.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, but here's the thing, like, okay, that, Neil, you actually, you actually triggered a thought, okay? So doing this needs a lead thing, the guy that was running it, he, he knows me, right? He's like, Eric, Eric, come over here, come over here. I'm like, yeah, he said, what do you think? I'm like, this is amazing, man. I was like, I would do this like every week if I could, right? Like, uh, and just keep spamming this thing over and over. You, you would love it too. Guess what, Neil? So he's like, well, Eric, you know, it's, it's hard to run it with these chapters. What if we just had all these networks within Y P O? And we brought him over to like, I was like, LA, LA, right? He's like, yeah, yeah, LA, right? He's like, yeah, we, let's just have six or seven hundred people come to LA. Let's just throw a dinner and we'll do three hours of needs and leads. I was like, yeah. He's like, yeah, he's like, I'm thinking we do it like once a year. I'm like, how about we do it like every month, right?

• 12:46Speaker 00

  Or like every six months or so. He's like, yeah, I like your energy. I like your energy, right? So my point of saying this is that, um, even if you don't join Y P O, or if you don't join E O, any of these groups, you can probably put something like this together. You just should probably make sure like there's Hampton, there's E O, there's Y P O, or you could put together your own and you can be the one that brings people together. Cause I think honestly, if you just had a group that does this all the time, like once a month, it would probably be a very successful group.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just totally. So funny enough, I got introduced to another Y P O chapter two weeks ago. I have a call, uh, about potentially joining Y P O again next week.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Which chapter?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Uh, Los Angeles.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  So I met one of the Los Angeles guys here. Actually, no, no, he's Los Angeles gold, so he's even richer. So, so he's like, yeah, so anyway.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  That's the one I tried joining, remember? And they didn't let me join.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  I told him, I said, I said, my friend tried to join and I said, he's like, how old's your friend? I'm like, you know, just like a year older than me. He's like, nope. You're just not gonna, he's like, why does he wanna join gold? Cause gold's a little, like, you have to be age wise, a little older, I think like fifty plus or so, and Neil's not there yet, so.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  No, but yeah, but the businesses are much larger in gold than, uh, the traditional Y P O Los Angeles. That's what's appealing about it.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Y P O Los Angeles is still a million, like a hundred million or more in revenue typically, so.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  It's, it's, you see that a hundred or fifty, I forgot what it was, and I think they may have some profit requirement. I don't know the details, but it's something like that. Um, so the size is bigger. Um, and I met one of the guys, actually, no, it can't be. Cause the guy who introduced me to it, cause I was telling him my issue with my old chapter, I was like, yeah, there's a lot of smaller businesses. The guy that introduced me, his business, I think does three, maybe four million in, um, profit, maybe five. And I think his revenue is somewhere between forty and fifty million a year. Still good size.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  It's probably fifty, but Neil, also these groups make exceptions sometimes. If they find that you, they really like you, they'll make exceptions, yeah.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause he asked me why, why I left and I was like, I wanna get into Los Angeles gold, cause there's so, so many heavy hitters that I would love to learn from. And they just wouldn't let me in. And I tried really hard, two times actually, once through Eric, once through another friend. Um, they just didn't like my age. They just feel I'm too young.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  They're ageist in a different way.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  But yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  But they'll say the same thing. They're like, why don't you just join a chapter and then when you're old enough to be in gold, then just transfer to gold. I'm like, but I wanna be in gold now. They're like, no.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  I guarantee you and I will be at G B S together next year. So they're gonna do it in the Americas, either in Brazil or Mexico City or New York or Dallas, right? So by that time you'll be back in and this will be the best event you've ever been to in your life. I'm willing to bet on it, so.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  If you're an entrepreneur and you do really well, the, the creme de la creme is Y P O, uh, Switzerland, is it? Or is it Zurich or something like that?

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're the richest, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  They're the richest. And I remember the guy who you introduced me to, I forgot his name, really good guy. Um, he's in Y P O L A Gold. He's just like, hey, they're open to talking to you, uh, if you wanna join the chapter. And they'll trade businesses like trading cards, like no joke, but the problem is, is I don't wanna fly to Zurich or wherever it is every single month. Like it's just, it's too much.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  You fly all the time anyways. It's, it's a fourteen hour flight. It's not that bad, you know?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  But going from Los Angeles to there every month just for the Y P O meeting, dude, I struggled to go to the meetings in L A when I was in my backyard.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  I mean, it, it's different. I mean, it's like, um, I think, you know, not, not talking about any chapter, but I, I know of a lot of people here that, that they left their chapters because, um, they, some chapters just like to party, right? And that's not what Neil does. That's not what I do. Neil likes to transact and that's not a bad thing. Neil likes to do deals, right? Um, and I think going to Zurich one month a month to go do deals, that's pretty cool. Um, but anyway.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  That, that's actually a good point, the way, way you put it that way. I'm like, yeah, you're just going there to transact. That's actually a good idea.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, why would, that's like, that's the, the love of the game you have right now is that, literally to transact and do deals.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Okay, well, let me know how it goes.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  All right. Catch you guys later.