Should You Run Your Marketing Team Remotely or In Office?, Seasonal SEO, A/B Testing, Youtube Shorts

Dude, that's when I posted something in December saying, sorry guys, you're coming back to the office, and I got a million impressions because everyone started going like nuts.

What do they say in the comments?

They're like, no, that's not true, that's the old way of doing it, blah blah. And I knew those responses were all going to be like that, but I'm just like, hey guys, like, sorry, behind the scenes a lot of people are just getting called back and this is what it's going to be like. Because, you know, I think we've seen both remote work and we've seen hybrid and we've seen in-office, and if Jamie Dimon said this really well, the CEO of Chase, JP Morgan. He's like, look, I'm a fan of remote work that works, but just for us, it doesn't work, right? And I think that's the case for a lot of founders, and that's just how it is. So, but anyway, a lot of people got mad at me.

So are you going to have more people come back to the office in 2025 outside of your WeWork that you just, that you've had for a few months?

I think for LA, and I love that WeWork, by the way, but in We don't have many people in LA. It's just my CTO and I, right? And so, but I think as we start to bring in, bring on more engineers, he wants them in the office. And I think for salespeople, we probably want them in office together as well. I think for, oh, this is going to go back to, you have a topic on this, marketers, I might want to be in the office with me as well. Like internal marketers.

Yeah, I can see that.

How about for you?

I'm okay with remote work. I work really well with our marketing team remotely. Sometimes they make some errors and it just pisses me off. Like, I just, I fume even if it's small. I don't know why, because it's like, if this, some of these little things are off, what else could be off?

Yep.

And I just want everything fixed without having to micromanage. And my team overall is really good and I don't have to deal really with too many little things, but I would say once, actually not more than once, probably like 3 times a year, I start nitpicking new things. And it's typically when we start hiring more and more people and And the team grows, people don't always follow the same standards. It doesn't matter what training material you give, but then once you get them in line and you tell them what's wrong and you give them the critiques, ends up being fixed. My problem is, as a manager, I don't like giving the critiques. I just expect people to do it the way I want from day one without any training.

Yeah, like to read your mind. So that's what AI is going to be good for.

And I know that's a lot to ask, but we compensate well if someone can just get what we're looking for right away. Because we don't have the time to train everyone up. But I don't think we're going to force the office. I just, for us, before we had office locations and we would have people come into the office because we would hire around there. It's too hard for us at this point because once COVID hit, we started hiring so much virtually.

You can't undo that. It's hard. Too hard.

And we have good people.

My philosophy is if you're exceptional, we'll hire you from wherever in the world, but not everyone is exceptional. And then with the AI, the AI bar is raising it for us, right? just only hire exceptional people anyway. So that's kind of my philosophy on it. And it's changing over time too, because I believe companies aren't going to need nearly as many people as they had in the past. So we'll see.

So internally, the way we see a marketing organization currently, it's like a pyramid, right? You have your CEO on the top, then upper management, then the management below, and mid-level, then the people underneath that, and it keeps going. It's like a pyramid with your interns and junior people at the very bottom. Because of AI, we see the pyramid flipped upside down with the point being at the bottom and the base. You won't have a total— your total count of people will be smaller, but percentage-wise, you'll have a lot more leaders, strategists, people who are really amazing, like the A players. And then you're going to have B players. And then when it looks like C, D, F players, you're going to have less and less of them because AI can replace those people a lot easier than they can replace the A and B players.

Yep. All right. So I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host, Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or a global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side. I'm excited for that. Let me show you something that I think, I think you'll— I want to get your reaction on this one. So this is Tim Soulo again, posting this, this tweet from Jason Fried.

From 37signals?

Yeah.

We increased Basecamp trial-to-paying conversion by 30% and we don't know how or even want to know how.

And so look at what Tim Soulo says.

Great idea, question, do it, move on. Why spend time measuring and debating how exactly that idea performed when you can spend time implementing a brand new idea?

All right, go ahead.

Like Jason Fried. If it's up 30%, I agree, you don't have to keep stressing on it. If it goes down, You better understand that it went down and you better either revert the change or understand why it went down. So then that way you don't make that mistake again. If something did go up, I don't think you should obsess about it. You should ideally try to understand why something went up so that way you can replicate that and get more of that lift or scenario.

I just don't want people to misinterpret this to think that you don't need to measure. This is still, you need to measure everything. And if it does go wrong, you need to have the ability to ask why, because Saying we won't measure it is abdicating your responsibilities.

Yes. And I think Jason Fried, I talked to him on the phone a few times. I don't know him at all, but I have talked to him on the phone a few times over, probably like 5 to 10 years ago. It was a long time ago. He probably doesn't even remember. The guy is a smart entrepreneur. He does look at things in an analytical way. I know he put that statement out there, but I bet you his team does look at things on, What caused lifts, why, and how can we get more of it?

Yeah, for sure. Speaking of testing, I have this one over here too. This one is— here, check this out, check this out. Here, I'm gonna share and then you read what's happening on the screen over here. All right, do you see this?

I do. You want me to read it?

Yep.

Sugar is good for you. And do you want me to read the view count too or no?

Okay, so here, I'll give it to you at a high level. So this guy Chandler Primus, Pumentum says, ladies and gentlemen, I give you A/B testing at its finest. So, the first A/B test here is sugar is good for you. Okay, 16K views on Twitter. Then the other one is sugar is bad for you. Okay, 30K views. So, double the views, right? Here's the second one. Protein is the cure to cancer, 12K views. The next one right after is protein gives you cancer, 57K. Okay, so let's just say that's a 5x, right? The last A/B test here is eat less protein, 13K views. Eat more protein, 5,300 views. So that— let's just call that, um, a little less than triple.

Whoa, protein gives you cancer has 354 hearts. There's no data. He's just randomly putting out stuff on purpose for an A/B test. I don't think he's trying to create false information. I think he's just trying to run an A/B test, uh, and see what gets engagement and what doesn't. But it's crazy how someone can just put out a statement like protein gives you cancer and 354 people heart it and they like it when I'm not saying it does or it doesn't. I think you just put that out there for the sake of it.

Yep. Look, notice how negative versions get way more views in comparison than the positive. And by the way, like when we do this on our YouTube sometimes, like whenever I say website traffic is dead or SEO is dead, like all the, like that get the videos start to take off way faster, right? So it's just, I think it's a human condition. Like people talk about, you know what schadenfreude is?

No, never heard of it.

Okay. Schadenfreude is when you get pleasure into watching someone else's suffering, right? This is like a German phrase, right? But I think when you look at the headlines from CNN, right, why do they call it the Crisis News Network? Because it's a lot of negative news that gets your attention. It's not the positive stuff that gets you, it's the negative stuff, because I think that's just how we're wired.

Yeah, my wife doesn't like watching the news because she's saying it's too negative.

It's true, it's true. But that, like, people know that that's what—

I like watching it and I want to hear all the bad stuff, not just the good stuff. I don't want to suffer, but I like hearing the bad stuff because I know reality.

Yeah, well, you're entertained by it and most people are entertained by this stuff and most people also don't have much to do with their lives, right? And so that's why it's a— they say if it bleeds, it leads.

Yeah, I can see that.

Yeah.

All right, so let's talk about Google Lens. Did you see what they're doing with YouTube Shorts now?

No, I did not see much this week.

All right, totally understandable. So with Google Lens, everyone already knows you can take out your phone, you could take a picture of something and You know, Google in the app has like this little camera thing. I think it's next to URL, depends on your app or your phone. You're pretty much loading Google Lens, but they're doing something interesting with YouTube Shorts. So we all watch a lot of short format content, but they're tying in the experience together now, which I think this is going to generate companies a lot of revenue in the long run. And again, attribution is going to become harder because of this, but if you're watching a Short, You can click on like a lens icon, circle up that part of the image or the video that you want to know more about. It will show you what that is and all about it.

And then you can buy it.

You can buy it or do whatever you want. I think this is going to be a huge game-changing thing in commerce because a lot of people buy stuff that celebrities wear. You agree with this, right? They're like, they're trendsetters.

Yeah.

If Justin Bieber is wearing Crocs and he did help blow up Crocs, I know they're already a big company, but he made it cool for people to wear Crocs. You could straight up just circle what he's— his shoes or his sweater, and then boom, it takes you to the site. You can end up buying it and be like, man, I'm wearing the same shoes that Justin Bieber is. That's going to get you a lot of sales. And then is it attributed to Justin Bieber? Is it attributed because of Google Lens and you're now allowed to easily see what shoes he's wearing? Like, who's it attributed by?

Yeah.

But, or what's causing the actual conversion. And I think this is a really cool feature that'll change commerce. I bet you over time, Instagram, Meta, TikTok, and some of the other players will copy this feature.

Yeah, I think it's a good start. I think it's a bad user experience because the fact that you have to pause it and then lens it or whatever, I think what's going to happen in the future is like, you're just going to be, it's going to be able to, if you want to identify it, you kind of just tap for a second and pause it and it'll like show tags and the price tag and you just buy it right there. That's going to make it a lot more seamless and it's higher conversion rates for everyone.

Yeah, in the long run, I don't think anyone wants to really circle.

All right, so that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe. And that being said, we will see you tomorrow.