Eric Siu and a co-host break down seven marketing channels they think are overrated: Clubhouse, Instagram, organic Facebook, Facebook Messenger bots, Reddit ads, push notifications, and podcast or Twitch ads. They stress that knowing your audience matters more than picking the platform everyone else uses.
Today, we're going to talk about 7 overrated marketing channels. Now we want to talk about what we think might be a little overboard right now. Here, I'll start first. Clubhouse. Neil actually won this battle with me. So Neil and I will often disagree on things. And this is one where I think Neil's going to win because I was spending 40 hours a week on Clubhouse. And I checked my phone last week. I was down to less than 1 hour. So a couple of weeks before that, I was at 4 hours. So I think drop-in audio is here to stay. I think it's everything in moderation. You have to go to the excess first to understand moderation. So Clubhouse would be the first one. I think Neil agrees with that. Yeah.
The next one is Instagram. I know a lot of people here love Instagram unless you're using like their features like live and doing interviews with people, like how Eric and I are doing a podcast together, but doing that on Instagram, most of the stuff that you'll post on Instagram, the reach is just continually going lower and lower. And it's going to be another Facebook. Even though it's already owned by them. And the reason being is they want you to spend more and more money on ads. We've seen this playbook all over again with Facebook. You're going to see it more aggressively within the next few years as well on Instagram.
Yeah. This one's going to seem like a lazy answer, number 3. But so Neil just talked about Instagram, Facebook, the organic reach is even worse on Facebook. So if you can, if you look at the trends for social over time, they need to drive more money from their feeds, right? Right. As they get bigger and bigger. And it's, if it's an auction-based system, it's going to get more and more expensive. And so the only way to continue for them to pump out more money is to drive organic reach down. So you got to think about the incentives of these social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, really any feed-based social platform. I think at least in its current state, it's probably gonna end up like that. So Facebook would be number 3.
And number 4 is going to be Facebook Messenger bots or any Messenger bots controlled by them. I know it's booming right now, but the reason I say it's overrated is it's not going to last. They're going to make you pay to reach out to every single person on your contact, which is going to suck. And then once people start spamming and everything like that, you're going to see the click rates go down. We're already seeing the click rates go down. But to clarify on this one, I think for the next 12+ months, you're going to be good, but you're going to see the same thing repeat with Facebook Messenger bots and any Messenger bots that they control. Yep.
On my end, your mileage may vary, but when I look at the time I spent on Reddit ads, it hasn't performed that well from the clients we've helped in the past. And that's not to say Reddit ads won't perform at all. I think there will be case scenarios where you can make it work. But I'm just comparing it to when you think about Facebook or Google Ads or YouTube Ads, you can really scale it effectively. I think with Reddit, you're going to— it's almost like hitting lightning in a bottle if you're going to make it work.
And number 6 on my end.
Yep.
Is push notifications. You can get a lot of traffic from push notifications. Those are those browser notifications that you see whenever you subscribe to a website.
But you'll—
what you'll find is it's great for traffic. It's terrible for conversions. That you can get a ton of people reading a blog post or whatnot, but that traffic just doesn't convert as well, or that channel doesn't.
Yep. And so number 7, last from my end. So I, in the last episode, I mentioned how podcast advertising can be really good. The problem, I think this one's really across the board. I think channels are overrated if you don't understand your audience, right? From using podcast advertising as an example, let's say you're trying to drive direct response conversions, right? That's just not going to work out for you. Or if If you are trying to hit up your audience where people are 50+ years old or 60+ years old, they're probably not going to be hanging out on Twitch. And I actually, Twitch would probably be one that I would pick as overrated because I've tried that one as well. But I just think I want to make this a little more general saying, hey, you really need to understand your audience because just because Neil and I are saying something's overrated or underrated, your mileage may vary, right? So you have to do your own homework, do your own research. So that is it for today. Text us 310-349- Once again, it's 310-349-3785, and just let us know your feedback or other topics you'd like to see us cover, and we will catch you later.
