The Bacon Podcast with Brian Basilico | CURE Your Sales & Marketing with Ideas That Make It SIZZLE‪!‬ Brian Basilico: Author • Speaker • Online Strategist | BaconPodcast.com

One of the most recognized sounds computer lovers remember is the dial-up connection and AOL's announcement that says, “You've Got Mail!” It was like a sugar high whenever you heard that sound. Nowadays, most of us feel like we have the stabbing pain of a cavity when we hear our Outlook or Gmail inbox notification saying, “You've Got Mail!”

What changed?

The biggest difference is that many (if not most) of the emails we get today have one goal: to sell us something. Some of that is subtle, like email lists we have signed up for, while others are just blatant phishing, which is a random solution (or at least they say so) in search of a problem.

It's hard to have the time and resources to optimize data, but that is one of the single activities that can impact email marketing success.

All too often, we import names and emails into email programs and lists because it's easy. What's a bit harder is collecting more detailed information and tagging contacts along their lifecycle on your email list.

I hate to break it to you, but people don't want your newsletter. Newsletters are about you, and they are interested in what benefits them. Yet companies create emails with five or twenty stories (some or all with links).

The real challenge is finding and creating content relative to your audience when you send it. It is so important to create fresh, specific, and timely content.

The best way to prime your business for the AI revolution is to learn how it works for you and your company in the current business environment and then adapt as the tools become smarter and more accessible (and affordable).

Let's face it. We are living in a world that is overwhelmed with information.



* 380 new websites are created every minute, and over 500,000 new websites are added every day

* 7 million blog posts are published across the internet daily

* 300 BILLION emails are sent per day (85% spam)

* 720,000 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube (30,000 days' worth of video content) per day

* AI-generated content creation will double those numbers in less than a year



Getting your messages in front of any audience is getting harder and harder, let alone the perfect audience who might care about what you do or sell.

Okay… Take a deep breath. It's not all doom and gloom. All of that information is only a problem if you are trying to outperform companies with deeper pockets and more cutting-edge resources.

You can totally zig while your competition zags. While most businesses are hunting for new clients in the internet marketing space, you can grow your business better and faster using relationship marketing principles. These principles are based on psychology, sociology, and human-to-human principles that date back to the beginning of time.

Let's dive into five myths and remedies that may help you achieve your desired outcomes while spending less money and making more in the long run.

Mulch is made by shredding trees. Finer shredding improves the soil over time. As organic mulches decompose, they can add nutrients and organic matter to the soil, enhancing its quality.

Mulch is not only decorative but also functional. It helps plants by regulating soil temperature, retaining water, and preventing weeds and erosion—all from recycled trees.

I think of creating content as an ecosystem, just like a tree. It starts with an idea or a seed of thought. It grows and builds roots in your business marketing. Then, it provides nutrients to help feed itself and your business.

Running a business is hard. The bigger the business, the more complex it is. You have to manage issues like people, finance, supply and demand, sales, marketing, and what I consider the most challenging part… finding customers and keeping them happy.

Like a tree turns CO² into oxygen, you can turn lessons into relationships. This means converting those lessons into strategic marketing ideas that facilitate sales.

Reinvention is based on results. It requires critical listening and critical thinking to understand the subtleties. You can hear how the bass drum and bass guitar build a foundation while the strings on the chorus lift the message to a different level. It has to become a habit of consuming fuel that drives you forward to success.

You may not think about it, but we are surrounded by messages and ads all day long. In today's digital age, the average person encounters between 6,000 and 10,000 ads daily. We are bombarded with billboards, snail mail, radio, and TV, not to mention all the social media content, spam emails, and robocalls.

All of that noise has one goal: to get you to spend or give your money to them. The never-ending battle for your attention and dollars is waged relentlessly daily. This works because we are personally tied to our beliefs, egos, and needs. We all want to be right, liked, and sustained without being taken advantage of. We face a lot of noise that is trying to persuade us. We tend to pay attention to what we find relevant.

If you think about it, each change in our economy has created new opportunities while the status quo has deteriorated before our eyes. People who refused to reinvent themselves and their businesses fell by the wayside, while others saw their fortunes explode.

Revolution is based on promises. Promises are like music that we have already heard. You may have an emotional connection, but the next song forms a new connection once the song ends. It's a sugar high that peaks and falls.

Reinvention is based on results. It requires critical listening and critical thinking to understand the subtleties. You can hear how the bass drum and bass guitar build a foundation while the strings on the chorus lift the message to a different level. It has to become a habit of consuming fuel that drives you forward to success.

If you have been involved in online marketing in any way over the last 10+ years, you have been fed a steady diet of more. More followers equals more sales. More hits to your website equals more sales. More social media engagement leads to more sales.

Almost nobody would argue that more sales are bad, but people have conflated more with better. I am here to say that better is worth more.

In the world of relationship marketing, sales begin at connection. A connection can come in the form of a follow, a friend request, a connection request, a message, a website form submission, or whatever each platform uses to start, generate, and maintain conversations and relational connections.

The main goal is to stay top of mind and maintain a connection so people will see your content, consume it, and hopefully learn something, and then engage in a relationship at the time of their choosing. That is the promise of social media. They do this for free, so people will pay for advertising to do just that!

Trust has to be planted and grown. It is a seed planted through a personal relationship. It needs to grow roots and be nurtured through light and water to produce fruit. Trust must be watered by honesty, warmed and fed through the light of integrity, and rooted in consistency. Strong roots and branches provide shade and shelter in the stormy weather of doubt.

It would be great if there were a way to measure trust. You can calculate the number of people who know or connect with you. You can measure likes by the number of people who interact with your social posts or open your emails. However, trust can only be seen when a transaction happens.

There are five stages to go from like to trust: Connection, Caution, Consistency, Courage, and Commitment.

No tool, system, or software program can automate trust. You may think that sending emails, keeping people in the loop, and sending them direct messages may help, and they do. But the only way to maintain and nurture trust is through human-to-human interaction.