Why the Smartest Brands Don’t Chase Customers Anymore| Jon Davids

Stop renting attention and start owning the demand by building a movement that turns customers into a cult-like community. In this episode I set down with marketing visionary John Davids to break down the movement formula and how you can stop playing the messy math game of paid ads. It's time to discover your marketing superpowers and build a brand so magnetic that getting customers finally feels like magic right about now. Learning how to hijack attention is something I figured out pretty young but really figuring out how to monetize it and turn it into money and sales and dollars and sustainably do that. That took a bit longer but you got to start with step one you got to get attention if you want to get anywhere. This is right about now with Ryan Alford a Radcast network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash and checks? Well it starts right about now. Yo what's up guys? It's Ryan Alford I'm your host. Welcome to right about now. Hey what we said we're always getting right. It's always about what works now. It's really mantra for today. We got John Davids, he's the CEO of Influicity and he is the writer and the author of marketing superpowers. What's up John? Ryan it's awesome to be here bro but looking forward to this. Excited to talk to you. Anyone that has superpowers or is writing about them as Superman, Batman and growing up I was pretty pumped. The biggest thing is you know how to grab attention and that's the key today is grabbing attention but you got a lot of substance behind it really respect a lot of what I see that you're doing and excited to kind of get behind all of it. I appreciate that learning how to hijack attention is something I figured out pretty young but really figuring out how to monetize it and turn it into money and sales and dollars and sustainably do that. That took a bit longer but you got to start with step one. You got to get attention if you want to get anywhere. Let's at the table give it a little bit of your brief background and who the hell you are. I'm a kid that couldn't do too much but figured out how to get attention on the internet and college and was able to turn that into a $300,000 business. Sure version is figured out Buzzfeed before Buzzfeed came along figured out how to get people to read content on the internet. This is pre-facebook, pre-youtube, pre-all that and I learned in the early 2000s the big sites on the internet were MSN, AOL and Yahoo and I essentially made some content, did some deals so that I could provide them with their content and in return they gave me hyperlinks back to my site and just doing that a whole lot of hustling grind I was able to build a business with a whole lot of advertising revenue pulling about 300,000 a year paid for college and then some and that was kind of my start of my entrepreneurial journey. What the hell does Influicity mean? It sounds like a cool word there's influence in there and there's action what does it mean? You know how hard it's to come up with names man you want to get something that encapsulates everything but yeah it's a bit of influence its own world I came up with city I think I actually sat down in the end and just wrote down a whole bunch of words left side of the page right side of the page our start was influenced from marketing so that was the inception of it and that's all we did for the first five years it was a long time before we added any other services so it's kind of influence. Influencer marketing is an interesting world it's been around longer than you think but it's evolved it's definitely changed what's your view just on influencer marketing and the evolution of it? I would say it's not crowded it splintered and the more influencers that come along the more space they carve out and they do take share away from others but it's share that is better used on exactly what they're doing the high-level influencers and influence in our culture is incredibly niche it's incredibly fragmented we all live in our own brand bubbles we all swipe the feed on TikTok and Instagram and see something and think everyone else is seeing it well here's a news flash no one else is seeing it you turn to the person to your right and your left they're seeing something totally different so we're all in our own cultures and our own bubbles and I think influence plays a big part of that because everybody can grab a mic in the camera most people aren't as good as they think they are we can't all be Ryan but if we can build something that people can watch all of a sudden we can carve out our own 10,000 fans and now again we've splintered it again that's how I think about it with TV declining like linear TV social media doing what it's done it's been rising a long time podcasting rising all these mediums it's almost becoming individual influencers or people are almost the TV stations of today it's fascinating because it's almost like reality TV meets social media meets authority meets celebrity it's this combination of things that makes it the content entertainment that people want to watch or even education because even TV was used for education and entertainment and now influencers are the new CBS ABC NBC I don't know if you've ever thought about it like that oh man you're reading my mind do you remember back when Ozzy Osborne had a reality show it was the OC and the Hills on MTV and it was really a lot of MTV and then it was good of each and I'm trying to Jersey Shore and when this happened and then a years later it was the Kardashians but that was kind of the start in my mind of the modern influencer era where you really build networks around individuals they become their own micro brands and then they start building products and services and all kinds of stuff around themselves and then it went from linear TV and cable to Instagram and that I would say probably the first big piece of that was the Kardashians Kim Kardashian 300 million plus followers on Instagram it's been this slow burn but it actually happened pretty quickly just a couple decades what's been your experience now having the agency and working with more of the self-made influencers I imagine and the ones that do it it seems like in a way not everyone's good necessarily in front of the camera and the mic but what's the balance between what's necessary to be an influencer you've got micro influencers you got big influential all that it's hard for me to divide the line because people always go should I just be an influencer does this enter into your foray much you've got to have something to offer in the book one thing I talk about a lot is the idea of choosing your content format wisely and so you could do visual content video you could do photo content you can do written content and there are influencers throughout every one of those genres you could have a famous author who's an influencer you could have someone who's on YouTube as an influencer you could have a writer someone on Twitter there's definitely different levels but this whole idea of should I be an influencer is the wrong way to approach it first of all most influencers and I know a lot of them they make no money they're poor and they don't have any money and there's no way of making money just because someone's got a hundred thousand followers and they're getting a bunch of likes they're dead broke don't be fooled by that that private jet is a set in Santa Monica I've been there the second piece is the best way to go about it is to have a business idea in mind or something that you could possibly sell and build a community around that the reason I talk so much about community and building customer communities is because that really is where you can connect content and commerce so you can say down the line maybe I want to start a brand for moms I want to do a clothing brand for moms I'm a young woman that's my thing the thing I would do on day one is start making content to serve that audience and then you'll monetize down the line but just making content for the sake of it because I want to be an influencer most of the time that's a loser's game yeah that's the evolution right there it's gotten a little better with people recognizing that just the sports cars and beach photos and all the aspirational content versus the meaningful truly building a community that's where you see the divide of the ironically the halves that they have not show me what seemingly a well-made thoughtful yet under-produced video and I'll show you who's probably making six figures versus the opposite of the beach photos and everything else who's probably living the reverse lifestyle some people are fooled by the term fake it till you make it you could fake it for a very long time and never make it if you have something to offer that's truly valuable you can put it out there actually in pretty crummy form and people will jump to get it I give you an example there's a guy I know on Wall Street he has a hedge fund and he is an influencer he can put content out on Twitter X he can put content out on LinkedIn and he will have people clamoring to see his content and I'll tell you why because what he's putting out is insanely valuable data analytics spreadsheets formulas financial models that are super valuable to his audience he doesn't have to get pretty and do his hair and turn on the camera like I do because he's got something way more valuable to offer which is a financial model that's super valuable to this audience gotta think about connecting again content to commerce and think about how you get there logically it takes more than just beach photos do you think with most people or brands trying to build the movement and trying to get that universe where does the pitfalls come maybe some of the things that hold people back or what's their biggest problem kind of getting to that stage the biggest thing I see Ryan constantly is there's two things you gotta talk about there's the how and the why and people get them reversed you see the why is why somebody needs to solve this problem if you want to go to the gym and lose weight and get a six pack your why is because I want to get a six pack that's where I'm going to the gym but if I'm the person who owns the gym who's trying to sell you a membership and all I'm talking about is hey I have a gym by a membership here in my hours check out the equipment all you're talking about is the how and again you as a business owner or maybe as the marketing person think oh but that's what I'm trying to sell it's a gym and no no no you're not you're trying to sell the why the why is because you desperately want to lose weight so you can play with your kids so you can run up the stairs so you can live to be 85 years old and be healthy and happy figuring out what is the why that's the customers why and what is the how and that's my product but always start with the why and go on with it for as long as you can you'll notice man one thing for example in my content I talk about a lot of stuff on LinkedIn on Instagram I'm always talking about the why I'm always talking about what's of interest to you as the reader I don't talk about myself at all or if I do it's like in the ps of what I'm writing focusing on the why and then getting to the how only when they're ready to take out their wallet you get your unifying message you get your social proof you have all the content you're doing these things but it's one way or another is it pay to play or can these things really happen organically they can happen organically I'll give you my diet tribe on that do you know the story of liquid death at all liquid death it's tall boy cans of water looks like it was designed in a tattoo barler I say it's Desani meets Post Malone that's kind of what it looks like before that brand ever started before that product was ever built there was no canned water at the time what the founder did was he just put out a video and then ads he spent like three or four hundred bucks ads on Facebook driving to this video with this really cool new rock punk star water brand and then when you actually clicked and got to the landing page it was just a email field hey this product doesn't exist yet put your email in and we'll let you know when we have it and he was able to get 50 or a hundred thousand email addresses of people who were just desperate for this water because they bought into the message they bought into the brand and he was able to then build it it wasn't built it and they will come it was promote it and then they will come and then you can build it I just like showing that example because it's to me that's like the minimum viable concept forget about minimum viable product that's the minimum viable concept of just showing a message to people and seeing if it resonates you down with MVC yeah you know me minimum viable concept you don't have to make the product John David everybody's gonna love this man you have to make the product I can start promoting some concepts if the concept makes sense on the side of building organically again I talked to so many brands that are playing what I call the messy marketing math game which is how do I spend a dollar to make five dollars how do I spend a dollar to make seven dollars on Facebook get off the Zuckerberg train for a second and if you open your eyes you'll see there are brands that are spending a dollar to make a hundred dollars you know make a thousand dollars because they have brands that resonate so magnetically when you see a line outside the door because this new sneaker brand just launched and there are people lining up at six in the morning believe me they're not running Facebook ads and doing the math they're just putting their product out there because they've already built that community I hate performance marketing I hate the term I don't hate the tactics I just hate the perception of performance all companies are in business to make sales we need some performance but you can't have performance when you don't have a movement you can't have sizzle without the steak baby it's got to be self-propelling and I'm with you we love Google we love Facebook we run ads on those platforms I'm not against that but I'm against those people building businesses that are 100% reliant on those platforms there are so many case studies of businesses that have crashed in burn there's a graveyard of e-commerce companies I don't want to name them because I don't want to offend anybody but there's all these e-commerce companies that thought they had figured out the Facebook algorithm build their 50 million dollar business on it and then realize when those numbers fluctuate a little bit guess what their cogs fall out of black their cat is off they're playing this cat LTV the messy math game all the acronym salad you got to deal with yes it's great to rent demand sometimes I call that rented demand but at a certain point you've got to own the demand too and and going back to your example Crumble Cookie's urgency scarcity FOMO limited time offers another big one is rituals they build this habit of we're gonna drop cookies on this day they're gonna show up on TikTok this day come into the store on this day all those things are what makes for a brand that people are obsessed with I do always think though on the own side some of the decisions have to be made with keeping up with that community delivering because email is certainly the channel you want that first-party data you want to have that direct communication are you a proponent of building these internal walled gardens how else are we keeping that community intact beyond email there's different levels so there's definitely the rented landscape totally rented which is I'm gonna buy space on Google to get in front of your eyeballs then you have the next level down which is the social media platforms which are not owned by you but at least you have organic access to them and you got to still play by the algorithm and then at the very bottom you've got things email you've also got podcast and SMS I would say you know texting people's phone numbers ultimately you want to get as close to first-party data as you possibly can I want to have an unintermediated relationship with you if you're my customer that comes down to phone and email but regardless if you have touch points that are out there and if you're doing as you scale if you're doing a lot of stuff you start with Instagram then you expand a TikTok and YouTube and X and podcast and video if you have enough touch points you can be present in people's lives and part of their daily habits even if they never subscribe or listen I do a podcast you do a podcast you do an amazing podcast and I'm sure you have people come up to you on the street Ryan or maybe you know email you and say hey I've been listening to you for six months man and you don't know this person's name you there's no indication that they're have any relationship but they are tuning in so just because you don't see them doesn't mean that people aren't there any final council any final tips tricks things that you're seeing on your radar or things that you want to convey to our audience I would just say that people wherever they are in their business journey whether you're an entrepreneur you're a professional marketing or a CMO a CEO you need to think about some of the stuff I talk about in marketing superpowers not because it's a certain way to market or not because it's like oh if you're talking to this kind of customer I need to build a community where I need to build a movement this is the way the world is going 510 20 years from now if you talk to people today I talk to them all the time I have young cousins nieces nephews who are 15 16 17 their media habits their media diets their consumption habits are a different world from what somebody in their 30s 40s or 50s is living today or was as grown up with you need to think about the principles I talk about because they will affect every single brand and if you want to be around in 510 20 years and still be relevant this is what you need to do today if you only make one sale to a customer and you aren't building a relationship for lifetime value and for repeat sales and referrals and word of mouth you can never outrun the new customer game you will never get where you need to go and that is the super power John's a pleasure having you on brother talk to me about where I can keep up and by the book the book is simple marketing superpowers book calm you can go there get a free sample get the first few chapters free and you can go Amazon Barnes and Noble wherever you want to get your books and then I'm at John davids calm you can go there follow me across social and I really appreciate you having me on today man this was awesome you know to find us Ryan is right not calm we have links to all this stuff today where you can find John where you can buy the book and where you can learn more about everything we're doing every day we appreciate you for making us number one we'll see you next time I'll write about now this has been right about now with Ryan Alfred a radcast network production visit Ryan is right calm for full audio and video versions of the show order one choir about sponsorship opportunities thanks for listening