four key strategies show how firms can lead with value.
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gear up for growth
with jean caragher
for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
“firms can’t afford to hide behind best practices or boring templates anymore,” says jay schwedelson, president and ceo of outcome media and host of the top-rated marketing podcast “do this, not that,” during his appearance on gear up for growth with jean caragher.
more gear up for growth here. | more jean caragher here | get her best-selling handbook, the 90-day marketing plan for cpa firms, here | more 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 videos and podcasts here
“it’s time to be bold, be human, and make sure you’re showing up where your prospects are actually searching, especially in ai,” he adds.
schwedelson delivers four urgent takeaways for cpa firm leaders.
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schwedelson delivers four urgent takeaways for cpa firm leaders:
- client loyalty is fading as budgets tighten and tariffs take their toll. “this year, loyalty is kind of out the window,” schwedelson says. “all anybody wants to do is not waste money. if your firm can articulate, ‘here’s where you can squeeze a few more dollars,’ that will get you the call and the business.”
- optimize for ai search (answer engine optimization – aeo). with more than a billion people using chatgpt weekly, firms must adapt. “your website is set up for google, not for chatgpt,” schwedelson explains. “the easiest fix is robust faqs and listicles. ai platforms are looking for authoritative, definitive answers – and if you don’t have them, you won’t show up.” he adds, “less than 10% of websites are optimized for aeo right now. if you act quickly, you can get ahead of your competitors.”
- forget “best practices”—test what works. outdated marketing rules are holding firms back. “by the time something becomes a best practice, it’s outdated. it means mediocrity,” schwedelson says. he gives the example of email subject lines: “you can put the word ‘free,’ you can use exclamation points, you can capitalize. none of that is what sends you to spam anymore. but if you google it, you’ll still find a million articles telling you not to do it. it’s just not true.”
- show humanity to stand out. clients want connection, not corporate wallpaper. “you’re not going to bore somebody into wanting to work with you,” schwedelson says. “it’s okay to share a meme, a selfie of your team, even your favorite tv show. people want to connect with human beings.” he emphasizes, “stop trying to be perfect. be real. that’s when you win.”
more highlights:
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- firms should focus on one or two platforms (like linkedin) and use a “give, give, give, then ask” approach.
- company linkedin pages must look active—empty or stale pages send a negative signal.
- most firms wrongly believe they send too many emails. the real problem is boring, self-serving content. emails should focus on helping recipients, not the sender’s agenda.
- generic webinar invitations and cookie-cutter templates fail. what matters most is the title and hook, and framing content around real problems or pitfalls that prospects care about.
- don’t use first-name personalization. it’s outdated. instead, personalize by role and industry (e.g., “for cfos in construction”) to lift open rates by 30%+.
more about jay schwedelson
jay schwedelson is one of the most influential voices in marketing today. he is the president and ceo of outcome media, the founder of subjectline.com, the founder of guru media hub (the parent company of the guru conference, delivered conference, eventastic conference, and certifiedguru.com), and is the host of the number one marketing podcast in the united states, do this, not that: for marketers.
transcript
(produced by automation. not edited for spelling or grammar.)
jean: hello, and thank you for joining “gear up for growth,” powered by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. i’m jean caragher, president of capstone marketing, and your host. i am excited to be joined by jay schwedelson, one of the most influential voices in marketing today. he is the president and ceo of outcome media, founder of subjectline.com, founder of guru media hub, and is the host of the number one marketing podcast in the united states, “do this, not that,” for marketers. i could go on, but we’ll run out of time for questions, so you can learn more about jay at jayschwedelson.com. jay, welcome to “gear up for growth.”
jay: i’m excited to be here. you told me if i came on then my taxes would be, like, 50% lower, so that’s why i agreed to this. but no, amazing to be here, and excited to talk about all things.
jean: yeah, cpas love to give discounts on everything. like, the least amount of money possible that they could charge, they’re all about it.
jay: yes, absolutely. i love it.
jean: so, jay, your website states that you do what most marketers are too afraid to try…
jay: uh-oh.
jean: breaking the so-called best practices.
jay: yes.
jean: tell us a little more about that.
jay: well, i think regardless of if it’s marketing or any industry or anything, by the time something becomes a best practice, it’s outdated. it just is. it means, basically, it means mediocrity. it means a thing that people are okay with you doing, but everybody’s then doing it, so it is literally the thing that you shouldn’t do, because it won’t break through. it won’t break through the noise. but then the other piece of it is, there’s a lot of things that have become ingrained into a best practice, that are just no longer accurate. and so people still latch on, especially in marketing, “oh, we can’t do that, because that’s not a best practice,” or whatever. and it holds you back. you’re following these rules that just aren’t true.
jean: so, how do you break that mold? if it’s already old, to me that means you just need to be looking and imagining new ways to do things.
jay: i’ll give you a great example. so, for a lot of the cpa firms that are out there, let’s say you have a new piece of content that you’re trying to promote, to get small businesses or businesses to use your accounting services. right? we have a new guide, “the 2026 guide to tax changes.” great. so, you wanna email this out. and in your subject line of your email, you would love to write “free guide,” “free 2026 guide.” but every best practice that you google on the internet is gonna tell you you can’t put the word “free” in your subject line. it’ll be a spam trigger word. you’re gonna go to the junk folder or the spam folder. all these horrible things will happen.
jay: and none of that is true. right? you can put the word “free.” you can put exclamation marks. you can capitalize. you could do whatever you want in the subject line, in the body copy, in the headline of your email. that is no longer, it was 10 years ago, but it’s not the reason today that you go to the junk folder or spam folder. and yet if you go and you google, you know, “spam trigger words to avoid,” or whatever, “don’t put the word free,” you’re gonna find a million articles that says the opposite of what i just said. but it’s literally not true, and it’s this best practice that’s, like, a myth. and there’s so much of that that’s just floating out there.
jean: mm-hmm. so, are you saying there really is not best practices?
jay: i think what i always like to think about, which is ridiculous, is, in your organization…let’s say you are in charge of marketing in your organization. whatever is the never-do list, like, you’re gonna be, “oh, we can never do that. we would never have a pop-up on our website.” okay, “we would never put ‘free’ in the subject line. we would never post on social twice a day.” right? “we would never…” whatever those never-do’s are, those are the first things, immediately, that i would try to test, because those are usually the things that are a, gonna work, and b, are old school, and not really what’s the case anymore.
jean: right. so, tell us what businesses are getting wrong with their email marketing today. because there is just so much email out there.
jay: yeah.
jean: so, i guess, what’s the worst thing that you see happening?
jay: i think everyone follows the same playbook. and they also think that they’re sending too much email. that’s the number one thing. “oh, we’re sending too much email. that’s why it’s not working.” sometimes they even cut back, and they go, “oh, we can’t send more than once a week. it’s too much. we’re annoying people. that’s why it’s not working. let’s send less.” okay. that is actually ridiculous, because you fall out of the minds of the people that you’re marketing to. your email’s not doing well because you’re very boring. right? because you’re sending out meaningless stuff. you’re sending out stuff that’s of benefit to you, the sender, not the benefit to the person. right? when you start sending out stuff that’s actually gonna help the other person, and not just get you a call or pipeline or whatever, that’s when you start winning.
jay: and then the other problem is what we’re sending out, what it looks like. the worst thing are these email templates. oh, we have a webinar coming up. let’s use the email template that everybody uses, you know, go on canva, download a template, or wherever you’re getting it from. i mean, everybody out there, without even seeing whatever the email is, if i said to you, “what does a webinar invitation look like in the world of certified public accountants when you’re trying to get businesses to register for a webinar?” in your mind, you’re like, okay, you open it up, maybe there’s, like, a blue background. there’s these two circles of people that nobody has any idea who they are. nobody cares who they are. it says “register.” it’s gonna be an hour long. it sounds epically boring. and you know that…you could see it in your mind. and everyone follows these templates and these playbooks, and that’s why it doesn’t work, is that you can’t just do what everybody else is doing, because that is a recipe to nowheresville, so your email’s not working not because you’re sending out too much. it’s because you’re sending literal wallpaper.
jean: so, what improvement would you make on that? because obviously, you want it to look good, right? what i’m hearing…am i hearing that it’s not so much how it looks, but what it says and doesn’t say?
jay: yeah. so, it’s a great question. so, first of all, it’s always the what’s in it for them. okay. so, now, you put your mind out there, somebody owns a business, they have 75 employees, they think they’re paying too much in taxes, or maybe they don’t understand the new tax laws, whatever. and maybe they’re the president of the company or the cfo. you have to put yourself in their mindset. say, okay, what would they be interested in? okay, so if this webinar is gonna happen in november, they’re gonna be really interested in what changes are coming in 2026. what do they need to know? and maybe you’re really big in a particular industry, like you’re big in retail, right? so, now what you wanna think about, the number one thing is what are you calling that thing? whether it’s a piece of content you want them to download, it’s a webinar you want them to register for, what you’re calling it is more important than anything else, right?
jay: so, if it was just “the latest trends for retail small business,” okay, epically boring. nobody’s gonna download it, nobody’s gonna register. what if it said “the five pitfalls to avoid in 2026 for small businesses in the retail sector?” oh, my god. i need to know what those are. i gotta hear that, i gotta be a part of that, and you have to put your mind in their mindset. and then once you get, okay, that’s the hook, and then you say, “here are three crazy stats that we’re gonna go over, and other tips we’re gonna go over in this thing,” and not in some sort of big paragraph, so it stands out, it’s a little bit bold and whatever. and at the bottom, you wanna mention the speakers that nobody cares about except their moms? great. do that. but i promise you, unless you have, you know, taylor swift doing your webinar, nobody cares who your speaker is. they care about the information they’re gonna get out of it.
jay: and then the other thing is this idea, one of the biggest trends in marketing is this idea of attend to receive. so, show-up rates for webinars are dropping very fast—about 25% lower yoy. if people don’t show up live, they don’t convert. offer something only live attendees receive (e.g., 2026 planning guide, exclusive live q&a) and promote it hard. that lifts show-up rates and conversions.
jean: right. so, you’ve touched on subject lines. and i know you have a lot of stats about subject lines and [inaudible 00:08:31] the wording to include, and for a while there, having different icons and everything, in the subject lines were working…
jay: right. right.
jean: …like, improving the open rate. so, what’s happening now related to subject lines, to help get those emails opened?
jay: i would say the easiest way to really increase your open rates, and that’s the percentage of people opening up your emails when you send it out, is doing personalization the right way. so, when i say personalization, people get it wrong. it used to be that if you put in every email you send out, in the subject line, you probably see it in your emails, it would say “jay, blah, blah, blah, blah.” right? you would personalize with the person’s first name. and three or four years ago, first-name personalization would do really well because, like, “oh, this is for me. how exciting.” but now everybody does that, and it became wallpaper.
so, we say personalization, the subject line, don’t do first-name personalization. that’s actually garbage. it’s weird. it’s old. but what you wanna do, always think about the sooner you can tell somebody who they are, the faster it is that they want to engage. so, for example, if you’re targeting, maybe you’re marketing to small businesses. maybe it’s mid market. maybe it’s enterprise. right? and then let’s say it’s different industries. let’s say you really wanna get people in the construction industry, right? in the mid-market construction industry. and you wanna target cfos. when you send out that email, that subject line should say something like, “for cfos only,” or “for cfos in the construction industry.” right? or anything along…or “for a new business that’s growing,” right? “for ceos trying to scale their business.” whatever it is, whoever it is, that is your target market, that is what your database is made up of, you’re marketing to, you flip the script, and you put that target audience, you mention it in that subject line. when you mention somebody’s title or function and their industry in the subject line, like “cfos in the construction industry,” open rates go up by over 30%. because, if i got an email, and it said “for marketers only,” oh, i’m a marketer. i need to open up that email. so you can’t just think you’re gonna get somebody excited by saying, “exclusive new webinar about blah, blah, blah.” nobody cares, right? let the person see that this is for them and not for everybody else. so i would say that’s the number one thing i would think about.
jean: right. okay. so, in accounting, and other professional services, the sales cycle can be really long.
jay: yeah.
jean: when companies are trying to make a decision on who their next auditor is, or who can give them a super consulting gig on whatever the topic might be, they’re not deciding that like they’re gonna buy a new vacuum, or a cd, or whatever it is.
jay: yeah.
jean: so, how do you change that approach knowing, that you need to communicate with that prospect over a long period of time? how is that nurturing different b2b as opposed to b2c?
jay: what’s interesting is the whole thing has changed, in this year specifically, and if i was out there, i’d be thinking about why is 2025 so different, as you race towards the end of the year? and the reason it’s so different is that whether you think the tariff stuff is over or not over or whatever, it doesn’t really matter, because it’s already baked in that it’s gonna have an impact on q4 for all businesses. business, consumer, it doesn’t matter. so, who cares about that? why does that matter into the cycle, the sales cycle? because this year, what we’re seeing is that loyalty is kind of out the window, as it relates to business-to-business marketing. it’s all about pricing, right? without the tariffs, everyone’s pretty loyal to their financial services providers, right? my accounting firm, [inaudible 00:12:14] have been with them for 10 years. they’re great, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
but now, you know, budgets are having, are tight. everyone’s trying to say, “am i spending money in the right place?” and they’re looking at everything, all their major vendors, all their major partners, and pricing has moved up to the top of the list, in terms of what is dictating whether somebody, a business is going to work with one vendor versus another vendor. so, leading with cost savings, leading with how to navigate tariffs heading into q1, 2026, right? talking about actual cost savings. you know, what 30% cost savings for your taxes this year, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. how can businesses save money maybe by switching to you as a vendor, but save money in general? if you speak from a perspective of price, we are seeing a cut-down on the sales cycle for professional services, dramatically, this year, right now, because, to your point, normally, the sales cycle’s really long, because it’s hard to break that loyalty that somebody has with their accounting firm. but this year, the sales cycle’s much shorter, because everybody’s trying to figure out how can i save a few dollars? so, if you lead talking about the impact of tariffs, if you lead talking about cost savings, you could shrink that massively.
jean: interesting. so, that also tells me that firms that offer services like segregation, cost segregation studies, and things like that, where the firm can help save that client or prospect money by doing things a little differently, leading with something like that is really gonna get the attention of a prospect.
jay: it would get my attention, right? because it would, because, you know, right now, all you wanna do is not waste money. that is it, right? nobody’s got extra money. nobody, “oh, by the way, we just got extra budget out of nowhere. we could do this project,” said nobody this year. like, literally nobody. it’s, “where can we squeeze a few more dollars?” and if your firm can articulate, “here’s where you get a few more dollars, that you may not be aware of,” that is going to get you that call, get you that business, because loyalty is out the window this year.
jean: mm-hmm. now, based on a comment you already made, i think i may know the answer to this question, but i’m gonna ask it anyway. are there risks to over-automating email or client outreach?
jay: yes. i believe, 100%. and what i mean by that is it feels automated, right? so, if you just think that you’re going to, everybody uses these marketing automation tools now, that, oh, they haven’t opened or clicked in a week, they get this email, they clicked on this on the website, they get this email, they downloaded this, they get these three emails. okay, fine. to me, i used to be a fan of it. i’m really not a fan of it anymore, and for two reasons. one is, it makes you lazy. once you have all these automations in place, you’re like, “well, we’re good. they’re getting all those emails that we set up. we’re fine.” and then your salespeople, your bdrs, whatever you wanna call them, they kinda just wait for the inbound stuff. let’s get those leads coming into our salesforce or hubspot, and i’ll follow up on them, and they just wait. i hate that.
but, the bigger problem, and we see this exactly in q4 every single year, is you actually start to put out a negative signal about your business. what do i mean by that? so, right now, i would say a lot of the firms that are out there, they have automation emails, that are firing out emails that have “the 2025 guide to blah, blah, blah.” right? there’s some sort of trigger email from your company, that you may not even realize is out there firing that off. well, after the month of september, if you are firing off stuff about the current year, 2025, it actually depresses future open rates of your emails. it increases unsubscribes. it is a negative signal, because basically, what it’s telling that person that you’re sending that email to is you’re outdated, you’re not paying attention, this is information that’s not useful to me. i don’t need the 2025 outlook in september. i’m in it. it’s almost over. i need the 2026 outlook in september. right, so, the first thing you wanna do if you have those automations is, right now, stop listening, for real, and go and check all your automations, and make sure there is nothing firing off that says “2025 whatever,” because people always think about, well, how many leads did we get? how many click-throughs did we get? but they don’t think about the negative signal that you could be sending out for all the people who are not engaging, and they’re not only not engaging, they’re being turned off because of what you’re doing.
jean: right. right. okay. so, let me ask a question that’s similar or maybe a little different related to this topic. so, with artificial intelligence, everybody feels now they could be expert marketers. all they do is plug things into chatgpt or whatever they’re doing. what is your advice for those seasoned marketers to really, for them to emphasize what they’re bringing to the table, and how what they’re doing as a live person differentiates their skills from ai?
jay: first of all, i’m a big fan of using ai in marketing. i’m not one of these people who thinks ai is gonna take our jobs or any of this garbage or nonsense. i think everything’s gonna be ai-adjacent. it’s gonna be there to help us do this stuff, whatever. but i think what’s gone on is the pendulum has swung so far as it relates to our marketing communications that when we’re doing our marketing, everybody’s going to ai, saying, “hey, what should my subject line be? what should my email be? what should be on my landing page?” and it spits out stuff, and you’re like, “oh, that sounds really good. that’s better than i could have done.” and you hit control-c, control-v, and away you go. you send it. that’s what everybody does. fine. not just in the world of financial services.
and so, but what has happened, which is super interesting, is that, as individuals, we now are receiving these emails and social posts and all this stuff. and there are certain things that ai, it doesn’t matter if you use claude or chatgpt or perplexity, doesn’t matter what you use, they all spit back, from a content generation perspective, basic things, always, your subject lines, certain words, your headlines, certain words, your social posts, certain words, right? and what happens is now, there are certain words and symbols that when we see, as recipients of this marketing, we instantly don’t engage with it, because we, subconsciously, don’t think a human being wrote it.
what do i mean by that? so, a great example is the word “unlock,” okay? unlock is one of the most common words across every ai platform that when you ask it for something, a headline for your…a subject line or a headline for your email, or a landing page, or a social place, it’ll say “unlock the blah, blah, blah.” right? and we’ve now seen “unlock,” about a year or two ago, used to do really well. if you start your stuff with “unlock the secrets to whatever,” it would do great. but now, because ai spits it out so much, it actually is hurting performance massively, right, because we’re not…i mean, how many things do we need to unlock? everything now says “unlock.” the same thing, for example, with em dashes, which is the extra-long dash.
jean: yep.
jay: right? believe it or not, chat gpt, when you ask it for a social post, okay, 60% of the time, it is giving you a social post that includes at least one em dash, which is the elongated dash. everybody now knows, when you see an em dash, right, that ai wrote that, and it’s hurting performance. so you have to make sure that whatever it is that you’re asking ai to help you create, that you are kind of putting in your two cents, you’re adding the humanity to it, because it’s not only that, oh, great, you shouldn’t just copy and paste it. it’s that it’s actually hurting things now, because we are tuning out because we’re seeing the same things over and over and over again.
jean: mm-hmm. so, that is great advice, not only for the marketers tuning in here, but for the accountants who might think, “hey, this is a great, easy, cheap way that anybody could come up with that social media post or that checklist or that guide, or whatever they’re trying to create. we don’t need marketers to do that. we’ve got these tools we could use ourselves.”
jay: hundred percent right. yeah, no, you shouldn’t go to ai first. i think, even though you’ll say, “well, it’s faster.” but that’s not the point. i think the point is, it’s important to struggle a little bit. it’s important to have the creative juices flowing a little bit. and then once you kinda have an idea, a plan, then you go to ai and say, “okay, clean this up. make this better. how can we blah, blah, blah.” but if you’re ai-first, that’s when i think things can go sideways.
jean: okay. okay. because it needs… because firms have the intellectual capital. they have the knowledge, in different service lines, in different industry sectors, that they need to capitalize on, and then utilize, let me just say, the add-on of ai…
jay: yes.
jean: …to perhaps provide some more ideas, or just to improve, if you will, what that final product is gonna be.
jay: yep. a hundred percent. one of the use cases for ai that i think people are sleeping on… so, chatgpt just updated to chatgpt-5. so, this is even on the free version. okay? you don’t have to use the paid version. and on chatgpt-5, the big change that’s available now for free users is it can go and search the web very easily. now, what does that mean? what you really wanna be thinking about, let’s say you have five big competitors. you’re in the boston market, there’s five companies you really compete with, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. you can go to chatgpt now… you couldn’t do this before they just updated it to chatgpt-5. and you say, “these are my five competitors.” and you put their urls in there, their website addresses. and say, “i want you to scan their website. i want you to tell me any pricing you can find,” even if it’s on a hidden page, which is still a public page, not doing anything sketchy. “i want you to tell me any offer they have. i want you to tell me their unique selling proposition they’re going to market with, the industries they say they’re serving, and i want you to make a table of all five of them, and tell me where they overlap, where they don’t, and then also analyze my website and tell me what it is that i could stand out by doing that they’re not doing.” and you ask it that one prompt, and you couldn’t do that before chatgpt-5, but you can do it now. it takes one second, and all of a second, you can go to market with a plan that you know is better than whatever your competition is saying, and it takes one second.
jean: right. that’s just amazing to me, of how… i mean, i remember back in the day, i mean, we’re going back decades now, we would be at an aam summit, and one of the members is talking about how we can search the internet, and find it from… and all of us were like, “what? you could do what?”
jay: right. [crosstalk 00:22:57]
jean: and now, look what we’re capable of doing within 60 seconds, just like you’re describing.
jay: oh, my god. i just dropped my son off at college, like, a week ago, and i was on the phone with him last night. and he’s like, “i think i’m gonna drop this class and pick up this class,” because he’s still in add/drop. i go, “okay, well, how are you gonna do that?” he goes, “hold on.” and then, five seconds later, he’s like, “i did it.” and i was like, “dude, when i was in college, i would have to go and find this person, fill out seven pieces of paper, probably wouldn’t even work…”
jean: right.
jay: i’m like, it’s just ridiculous how easy everything is now.
jean: right. yeah. wait in line, and also hope that there’s enough seats left in the class.
jay: right.
jean: ask the professor if you could join [crosstalk 00:23:35] it’s just, it’s wildly different…
jay: yeah. oh, no.
jean: …in this time span. so, let’s look towards 2026.
jay: yes.
jean: are there, and you just mentioned a great example of something that’s underutilized, using chatgpt, the version 5.
jay: yeah.
jean: are there other underutilized, or maybe tools we already know about, that we could take advantage of in 2026?
jay: yeah. i think the biggest tool everyone should be looking at right now is reddit. i really do. i think that it’s not on enough people’s radar. it is exploding in use. and one of the reasons, and i’ll tell you how the best way to use it, one of the reasons reddit is exploding in use is kind of the anti-ai platform. what i mean by that is all, meta, linkedin, all of them, they’re trying to have ai participate in content creation on their platforms. reddit is not, purposely. and it’s all human-created content on reddit. and there’s just so much amazing stuff. and because the way it works is people upvote content that they think is smart or whatever. so, if you, again, use chatgpt-5, you can go to it, for example, and say… because you may not be familiar with reddit. maybe you’re like, “i don’t even know how to use that,” whatever. it’s really simple. you go to chatgpt, the free version, you say, “hey, please scan reddit, and tell me in the last 60 days what are the most upvoted, shared, engaged-with posts about accounting services for commercial accounts,” or whatever. and then it will bring you back the actual posts on reddit that have been the ones that have been most engaged with, circulated, whatever. and all of a sudden, you’re like, “whoa. this is what everybody cares about. this is what everybody’s talking about.” and now you know, okay, if that’s what they care about, if i talk about that, i’m gonna win the day also. so i think reddit really is underutilized, and now, with chatgpt, the way it’s set up, you can kind of scan it easily.
jean: right. do you know, another thing, and maybe you can confirm this for me, what i’m hearing is the importance of firms to be found on chatgpt.
jay: yeah. yes.
jean: is that…
jay: very critical.
jean: …do you feel like that’s the next big deal?
jay: well, it’s the current big deal, and i’ll tell you how to make sure you’re found. so, there’s over a billion people a week now using chatgpt. and the difference is, when you go to google, you ask for information a certain way. when you go to any ai platform, whether it’s claude, perplexity, doesn’t matter, chatgpt, you’re asking in a much more question-and-answer way. right? and so, the problem is, when you go to chatgpt and say, “hey, i have a business, 100-employee business, construction, and i need a new accounting firm. what are the best accounting firms in my area?” or, “what are the top things i need to think about to hire an accounting firm?” whatever. and it’s very conversational. ironically, you’re talking to a robot. it’s very conversational.
the problem is, your websites, and everybody’s websites out there, are set up to have google scan your website, show up in google. you’re not set up to have chatgpt and the other ai tools scan your website and show up, have your content and stuff show up there. so, the two things you wanna do to make sure that you show up when somebody asks that stuff is number one, it’s all about listicles and faqs. you need to have very robust faq on your site. why? because that is literally question and answer. right? it’s literally question… and listicles, “the top 10 things you need to know,” “the five things that” whatever, turn everything you have into a listicle, because the large language models, the ai models, what they are looking for is definitive speak. this idea of authoritative, definitive speak. so, when somebody asks a question, they go, oh, “what are the three most whatever?” “oh. the three most whatever. i found that on this website over here. let me stick it in there.”
jean: right. right.
jay: now, if all of this is overwhelming, here’s the easiest thing on earth that you could possibly do. you go to chatgpt and you say, “this is the website of my company. what do i need to do to optimize my site to have it show up in answers when people ask questions about accounting firms of this size,” or whatever? and then it will give you back, “you need to do these 10 specific things. add this to this page, add this to that page.” and it’s called aeo, answer engine optimization. instead of search engine optimization, it’s aeo. it will literally tell you step-by-step what you need to do. and the reason you’re gonna do great, it’s gonna change your business, less than 10% of all active websites right now are optimized for aeo. so, if you optimize for aeo, guess what? you’re gonna show up when all the other big accounting firms aren’t gonna show up, because they’re not there yet. so, it’s easy right now to show up.
jean: right. right. okay, folks. again, i hope you’re paying attention, because jay is offering really practical, doable things that, i mean.
jay: yeah. very doable.
jean: don’t log off now and do them. wait till the end. but talk about… see, that brings me back to the brief discussion about the seasoned marketers, and how important their role is. and having information like this and being able to deliver information like this to improve their firm’s marketing, that’s priceless, really.
jay: yeah.
jean: so, let me dip in just a little bit about social media. so, i did email some colleagues, and said, “hey, you won’t believe i’m getting jay schwedelson on ‘gear up for growth.’ what should i ask him?”
jay: uh-oh.
jean: so, one of my friends has a question about social media, and she wants to know, how did you find your groove? how do you plan the social, like, with your content? how do you use the calendar? do you leave space open for stuff that pops up? how does it work for you?
jay: so, that’s a great question, and the answer is, i have no idea what i’m doing. no. the reality of it is, when i first started on social, which really was during covid, i was like, “i need to be everywhere.” okay? i started accounts on what was twitter at the time, and linkedin, and everywhere. and then i quickly learned that, first of all, for me, in my business, it was really not sustainable to try to be significant everywhere. and the thing [inaudible 00:29:59] in your mind, should i be shallow, meaning be everywhere, and do an okay job everywhere, or do you wanna be deep on certain platforms, and kind of find your tribe on certain platforms?
and i got very real with myself and my company. i said, i think we need to go deep and not shallow. right? so, for us, linkedin turned out to be a really, really good spot for us to do that. right? and what has really won the day is…and gary vee was just on my podcast, so that’s why it’s on my mind. and he coined this thing of give, give, give, and then ask. and i think it’s the most important thing in social media, which is, stop trying to sell. when i say give, do posts that are literally of value to whoever’s out there, and you ask for nothing. like, maybe i’ll say, “oh, do this tactic. check it out. here’s some new data that we have.” and i don’t say, “and download this tip sheet, and sign up for this webinar.” i just say, “here’s a tactic. good luck to you.” right? and you do that three or four times in a row. and then that fourth or fifth time, you say, “hey, by the way, i got this thing coming up. will you check it out?”
when you start to post on social with no agenda whatsoever, that is when you start to get traction. the fail is when people are like, “yeah, but i really wanna tell them about this new webinar. it’s so exciting.” nobody cares. right? you have to win the right to then share the thing that you actually want them to do. and i would focus, if you can, on a particular platform. and then also always thinking about, again, that negative signal. i think one of the biggest problems with accounting firms, because i know a little bit about them, is company pages on linkedin. okay? i’m not even talking… i don’t care if your company page does really well. the problem is, we don’t really go to people’s websites anymore when we’re checking them out. “should i work with this firm? let me go check them out on linkedin.” right? and then they go to the company page.
and here’s what happens. your company page has 22 followers. your company page hasn’t posted in three months. or it’s posted twice in the last month, and it’s the exact same post twice, and one person has engaged with it. it makes it look like your company stinks, that you’re not relevant, right? you need your linkedin company page, more than any other social media thing, to have some action. you need to be intentional about getting followers. you have to get at least a few hundred followers. you need to make sure that you are posting stuff, that people in your organization are at least liking it, looks like there’s humanity to it, and it’s not wallpaper, the same post over and over and over again. the same attention that you put to your website, you need to put to your linkedin company page, because that is where people are checking you out now, so that’s how i think about social.
jean: interesting. okay. because i know a lot of firms, they do pay a lot of attention to recruiting and retention on their websites, and they have all their people, pictures, and activities and outings, and outlining how fabulous it is to work at a firm, and not paying as much attention to the company pages on linkedin.
jay: especially if you have a staff, activate your team members. listen, we’re posting… i’m sure people have internal slacks, they have whatever. i’ll give people a secret trick, that i’m not supposed to talk about, but here we go. here’s a secret trick. so, you should have the people in your company like and comment on the posts that your company’s putting out there. but here’s the mistake everybody makes. “okay, somebody’s in charge of the linkedin page in the company.” they post something up there, and then they copy, they get the url of that post, right? and they put it out in the company’s slack or teams or whatever, and says, “everybody go and interact with this thing.” and they’re actually hurting performance, because here’s why. when you copy that post, that link to that post, and then you send it to everybody, linkedin knows that you’re trying to kinda game the system. they know you’re trying to get people to circulate.
so here’s what you have to do, that i’m not supposed to say, but i don’t care. when you copy and paste the url, the actual address of that post, what you’re gonna share, the whole long thing, there’s gonna be all these characters and weird things towards the end of that link that you’re having people click on. you wanna erase all the characters, all the way back to the question mark. you’ll see a question mark in the middle. because when you erase all the characters back to the question mark, and then you copy that link, and then you have your company interact with it, it actually is as if that appeared naturally in that person’s feed when they click on it, as it relates to the algorithm. and then when all those people in your company start to interact with it, because it’s “naturally appearing in their feed,” that’s when it lights it on fire, and it circulates really far. and you absolutely should be doing that with all your posts.
jean: wonderful. wonderful. okay. couple more questions. so, are you willing to share your go-to tools for editing and scheduling and things like that?
jay: oh, yeah. it’s not that exciting. i wish it was. so, we have a lot of homegrown tools that we’ve built, using ai, but here’s what i’ll tell you. for linkedin specifically, we got rid of all automation tools. i will tell you, and this came out, actually, just in the past few days, linkedin is massively depressing circulation for anybody that is using an automation tool on linkedin. so, if you are using one of these tools for outreach, where it’s sending 50 messages a day, or it’s doing anything automated, that is a recipe to failure, massively. so we actually don’t do any automation tools on linkedin specifically anymore. some of the other platforms, it still works fine. on x, it works great, and some of the other platforms, it works great, but don’t just think you could do an automation program on linkedin, because it will destroy your engagement.
jean: interesting. okay. so, just when you feel like you’ve got that system and the processes in place, things happen just to shake it back up, right? i think it’s just to keep us all on our toes, so to speak.
jay: it’s never-ending. it’s exhausting.
jean: right? right?
jay: yes.
jean: what is one marketing trend you wish would just go away?
jay: oh, wow. that’s a loaded question. i think that, i wouldn’t say i want it to go away. i think i want people to be more open to being a little human, meaning that i wish everyone would get even more comfortable sharing real stuff on linkedin, or in emails, or… i think the thing that connects all of us, the thing that we like to respond to, is when people aren’t so boring. right? it’s okay to share a meme. people think, “well, we’re an accounting firm. we can’t share a meme. that’s ridiculous. no one’s gonna wanna use us.” it’s just not true. people wanna connect with human beings. and you’re not gonna bore somebody into wanting to work with you. you’re just not. i mean, the biggest brands in the world… i mean, look at the shift in mark zuckerberg, for example. mark zuckerberg used to be a giant nerd. right? he was just a nerd. started facebook, all. and in the last two years, all he did was change it all around. now he’s out there surfing, and doing jujitsu and whatever, [inaudible 00:37:14] he’s added humanity, because he knows that’s what works.
so, i wish everyone would post a selfie of their team out somewhere, taking a walk, or, “oh, this is our favorite coffee spot here. this is the tv show that’s most popular in our company right now,” because i promise you, if you said “xyz accounting firm, the number one show that we’re all watching right now is ‘the biggest loser’ documentary,” or whatever, and you sent that out, and you say, “reply back. let us know what you’re watching,” you’re gonna get more replies to that than anything else that you’ve done. it’s gonna start a dialogue, and you’re going to get business. you have to start to think of everybody as a human. and i think that that’s the thing that kinda drives me a little bananas.
jean: right. yeah. i have noticed on linkedin that there are more personal stories on there.
jay: yes.
jean: and i don’t see this as much… well, i do still see this a lot, but the post will start off with, “i know this is linkedin, and we’re really not supposed to share this kind of information, but i really feel compelled to reach out and tell you about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” so, maybe we’ll get to the point where we’ll see more personal stories like that, without the caveat at the beginning.
jay: you know, i think all the platforms are flip-flopping. linkedin’s getting more, it’s okay to be a human. and then instagram, the growth for, i will tell you, the number one converting channel to generate leads, webinar registrations, content downloads for business-to-business marketers, financial services marketers, is instagram reels. instagram reels is converting better than linkedin ads.
jean: wow.
jay: much, much more effective cost per acquisition than linkedin ads. if you are trying to promote your cpa firm and you’re not using instagram reels to capture that audience, and when i say instagram reels ads, it’s the reels ads that capture the data on-platform. so, it says, “hey,” and you probably see it right now when you go on instagram, they’ll say, “hey, you wanna get this new tip sheet? click download,” and you download it right there. you don’t leave platform. it is crushing it. so, this idea that linkedin is for business, and instagram is stupid, it’s for consumer, it’s just not true. i mean, there’s billions of people on all of these platforms.
jean: right, right. okay. so, my last question is a bonus question.
jay: ooh. here we go.
jean: okay. so, if you had to pick between “love island” and “love hotel,” which one would it be?
jay: wow. that’s a big question. you know, it’s a very important question that you ask. and here’s the reality of it. a lot of that [crosstalk 00:39:39]
jean: yes. i saved the most important one for last, right?
jay: oh, easily.
jean: this is critical.
jay: [crosstalk 00:39:42] i’m very sad in what i’m about to say, but, first of all, i’ve been a big fan of “the bachelor” franchise since it started. i think it’s going into the garbage. i actually think it’s going to die. and the reason is, so many of these other shows have gotten so much better. so, “love island,” although it’s a little bit ridiculous and over-the-top, it is a better reality show than “the bachelor” series, so i think “love island” wins the day. i love “love is blind.” that is a fantastic show. that’s one where they don’t see each other, they get engaged, all that stuff. now, “love hotel,” that’s a deep cut, because, if you watch “love hotel,” then you’re my people, but what “love hotel” really is, that is basically an all-star cast from “the real housewives.” all right? and so, i’m always curious how these shows get made, because in order for somebody to watch “love hotel,” which i watched, you have to know all the “housewife” people, from all the different “housewife” shows, and then watch that. so it is a very, very small population of doofuses like me that would appreciate it, but i am very happy it exists, because i watch all of it. so, that is a fantastic question. do you have a reality show that you like?
jean: you know, the closest reality show i watch is “amazing race.”
jay: that’s a good one.
jean: yeah. i really enjoy that, because sometimes it is a little ridiculous, but i feel like i’m watching people learn how to do something new, or they’re learning how to work together, or they’re figuring out some problem, or also, so there is real-life application there.
jay: oh, my god. you’re totally, you’re a much better person than i am. i’m always watching with only one perspective on any reality show. i go, “well, at least that’s not me.” you know, and i’m like, i always say, “oh, i’m doing good. i’m not that person.” i’m not like you, like, “oh, i’m looking at teamwork, and they’re building together.” i’m like, “no, no, no. that person’s a mess, and at least that’s not me.” so, that’s where i come from.
jean: oh, my goodness. well, yeah, i did watch “the bachelor,” like, when it’s first started. of course, you know, i was appalled, but i kept watching for a while. and then it just, there just wasn’t space…
jay: amazing.
jean: …there wasn’t space in my life, you know, to watch those anymore. so, yeah. i think i’ll stay to “amazing race” for as long as they’ll show that.
jay: probably a good decision.
jean: oh, gosh. well, i’ve been speaking with jay schwedelson. jay, many, many thanks for sharing your insights today, and just all these tips and tricks that you were willing to share with everyone. it’s very much appreciated.
jay: honor to be here, and this is great. and you’re doing great with the show. keep it up. and yeah, thanks for having me.
jean: thank you. and thank you for tuning in to “gear up for growth.” be sure to check us out next time, when we focus on another topic crucial for accounting firms aiming for smart growth in today’s competitive marketplace. i’ll see you then.