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November 5, 2024Episode 59
Stop Following These Outdated Marketing Trends

Are outdated marketing trends keeping you stuck in the past while everyone else is moving forward?
In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into something that has been bugging me for a while—outdated marketing trends that everyone keeps holding on to. Inspired by recent conversations at Julie Greenham‘s Elevate experience, I’m sharing why it’s time to shake things up if you want to keep your marketing—and your business—alive and thriving.
We’re talking about breaking free from the tired tactics that no longer serve you, and instead, embracing what’s working today and what will keep working tomorrow.
This episode is packed with real-life insights, personal experiences, and actionable tips to help you navigate the modern marketing landscape while making genuine connections.
Resource Links
Grab my free guide, “5 Game-Changing Steps to Set Clear, Achievable Goals for Your Online Event Success“
Connect with Jennie:
Website: https://jenniewright.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennielwright/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniewrightjlw/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjGQCVDgaOGsxrqq-w0Osmw
Want to grow your email list or launch your next product to a ready list of leads? Let’s talk
On This Week’s Episode:
1. The Rise and Fall of Marketing Trends
Marketing trends come and go—so why are so many of us still clinging to tactics from 2015? We’re breaking down why sticking to outdated methods could be holding your business back and how to adapt to what’s working now.
2. The ‘Feet in the Sand’ Myth
You know those ‘work-from-the-beach’ photos we see plastered everywhere? Let’s debunk this misleading lifestyle trend and talk about what it really takes to grow a business, even if it means putting those feet in some uncomfortable shoes now and then.
3. Quality vs. Quantity in Lead Generation
More leads don’t always mean more sales. I’m sharing how I hit six-figure success with a modest-sized list and why the numbers game isn’t as important as the quality game.
4. Creating Quality Engagement
Spoiler alert: A smaller audience that’s highly engaged will outperform a large, passive list every time. Let’s explore how to turn those subscribers into raving fans who actually convert.
5. Automation vs. Connection
Automation tools like ChatGPT are incredible, but overusing them? That’s where we can get into trouble. Let’s talk about how to find the right balance between automation and maintaining those genuine human touches that build real trust.
6. The Power of Consistency and Adaptability
Staying relevant means staying adaptable. We’ll chat about why keeping up with changes and maintaining consistency is crucial for long-term success—and how to make those shifts without overwhelming yourself.
7. Future-Proofing Your Marketing
Finally, we’re looking ahead at what’s coming in marketing. I’ll share my tips on how to keep pivoting, evolving, and showing up for your audience, even when the landscape changes.

Jennie Wright
Lead generation and online summit queen, the host of the Aquire podcast
Jennie Wright [00:00:01]:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Acquire podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Wright. And in this podcast, we talk about list building and lead generation, sales and online events, and a couple other things that really help move your business forward. And today, I want to give you a bit of the lowdown on why I feel you need to stop following a bunch of really outdated marketing trends. And this comes from a conversation that I had at an event last week. It was Julie Greenham’s, Elevate experience and it was held in, just like east in Toronto here and really great experience. I love, Julie Greenham’s events and I go to every single one.
Jennie Wright [00:00:43]:
And I had some really great conversations with quite a few people. And one of the conversations I was having, when we were in a group of 4, so the room was full of people, and then we broke off into subgroups, and we were talking about, how we could make these bold, audacious moves in our business. And one of the things that I said was like, we’ve got to stop following some of these really silly ways that people market to each other. And so I want to talk about that today because I think it would be helpful for you to understand what I’m thinking, what I’m, you know, what other people are thinking when it comes to these marketing trends, because if you get stuck in them, then you can just get stuck and they’re not doing what they should be doing. And I, and I say this with a caveat, because at some point, in some way, all the different marketing trends do work at some level. This is, this is true. This is known to be true. However, as we grow, as the marketing sort of area of online businesses improves or becomes a little bit more, I don’t know, Maybe we get more savvy, then some of these trends fall off at least for a while.
Jennie Wright [00:01:54]:
And then other trends kind of bubble up and then those ones go away for a while and then other trends bubble up. Okay. So you might remember the trend of showing your feet in the sand with a book in a, you know, like sitting in a lounge chair on a beach and the comment being making money while you, you know, do nothing but go on vacation. Right. That was a whole thing. And I remember distinctly attending a webinar. It was a couple of years ago and the webinar started with that, with a slide, with that image on it. And this person said, I took my wife to Aruba.
Jennie Wright [00:02:30]:
And while we were on the plane, we had wifi and my phone just kept dinging with sales, ding, ding, ding, ding, you know, and they were getting all these sales and how awesome it was that their business would just do all the work for them while went away on a romantic vacation with their wife in Aruba. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s cool. But it got overused and it was also used incredibly, like it was really false. So I actually saw people posting pictures of themselves supposedly on a beach, making money and everything. Their feet were in their kids, you know, puddle pool with sand in it or like other things. I mean, I just, you know, this to be true, you know, that some people were doing this falsely giving a false impression. Everybody, not everybody does it, but there’s a lot of people who can, I guess blow a little smoke and make you think that things are better, more rosy, better than they are? And I just want to say that, you know, if you’re doing that, that’s entirely your choice and I’m not going to, I’m not going to judge you specifically for it, but I am going to judge the fact that there are better ways.
Jennie Wright [00:03:42]:
Okay. And so maybe you just don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re just trying everything under the sun to try and get things to work because you can’t get any traction. And I really understand that point because I’ve been there too. But what I will say is there’s better things you can do. And you might be listening to me going, but Jenny, I do all those better things and it isn’t working either. Well, then we need to look at other things and, and, and I’ll talk about that shortly. But the first trend that I really want to call out is this numbers game. And it has to be with like, you know, more leads equals more sales, which is such a complete and utter fallacy because I’ve had clients hire me.
Jennie Wright [00:04:21]:
And I’ve also seen this firsthand with other people that you can have a list of like 10,000, 30,000 or more, literally more, and not have any sales. One of the clients that I had a couple of years ago, she hired me and somebody else I was working with at the time to do a whole bunch of marketing for her. She had a list of over 30,000 that she had accumulated over time. I’d say in the past, you know, the decade previous to that. But she hadn’t communicated well with that list. She hadn’t done anything really well with that list and wasn’t making any money off of that list because it really was a hodgepodge of people. And so when we went about creating webinars for this person and marketing, copy and, you know, graphics and so on and so forth. They didn’t, it didn’t go well.
Jennie Wright [00:05:13]:
The webinars didn’t get a ton of people and, her social media wasn’t responding, even though she was like, she had a really big following on social media. And I remember distinctly that this client was trying to get verified on Instagram, like crazy, because she did have a ton of people copying her accounts. And there was a lot of fake accounts out there at the time. Cause she’s a, she was, I don’t want to say minor celebrity, but she had some celebrity status. And so these webinars weren’t working, we weren’t getting a lot of people, we created product, you know, we had all sorts of stuff, and the numbers weren’t hitting the way that she was hoping that they would hit. And it’s because she believed strongly that the bigger the list the better. And it’s not about the numbers it’s never about the numbers it’s always about the quality. And I really want to dispel the myth that adding as many people as possible to your email list is the solution to all your problems, that it will automatically translate into sales, that it will automatically translate into success.
Jennie Wright [00:06:17]:
It’s time that we stop obsessing over list metrics and they really don’t matter. I promise you, they don’t matter. I say this in a lot of podcasts. I got to 6 figures with 356 people on my list. And the majority of that money that I made at 6 figures was coming from a smaller majority of that list. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t a big deal that my list was 356 people. I was making 6 figures and I managed to do that for a couple of years in a row. And then I have grown my list and you’d be surprised, like I work on list building.
Jennie Wright [00:06:53]:
Okay. You would be surprised at the size of my list because it isn’t huge, but it is focused and it is quality, right? So when I send an email, I do have an open rate that exceeds somewhere in the range of between 45 52%. When I send an email, I have a really decent open rate. When I send an email, I have a really decent click through rate above average on all points. And that takes work, right? So that takes cleaning out people that do not want to be there, allowing the unsubscribe unsubscribes to go away and wish them well and so on and so forth. But it really takes focusing on the quality and not the quantity. Okay. Quality engagement will always supersede a huge, but passive audience.
Jennie Wright [00:07:40]:
And so as you’re growing your list, look at the ways that are going to keep that audience engaged. And one of those ways is segmentation. So segmenting your list into subcategories based on their niche or based on their desires or based on their needs and so on is one of the tricks. Okay. The other thing is really focusing on where you’re promoting and what you’re doing. So high quality content, everybody preaches about it, but I also look at where you’re putting your time. So I find that being a guest on other people’s podcasts is a massive way for me to create a quality list. In addition, I’m on summits and bundles, but I do not overdo this.
Jennie Wright [00:08:22]:
I actually spoke to somebody last week who, at this event. No, it wasn’t at that event. It was on a call. I was on a, yeah, I was on a call with a bunch of people who were participating in a summit and we were all going around introducing ourselves. And one of the women that was on it said, oh yeah, I’m on 10 summits this month. I was like, I didn’t say anything, but I was like, holy crap, 10 summits. So your list is being pummeled basically with promotion to 10 different summits and the leads that you’re getting are coming from 10 different sources. And you’re most likely doing this month over month.
Jennie Wright [00:09:00]:
That’s also not a good idea because you’re not producing quality content. You’re just promoting And your list is not like, that’s looking at your list as very transactional. And I harp about this, but you should never look at your list as a transactional thing. If you’re going to email your list, it should be for a good reason. You should be providing good quality content for them, solving a problem for them. Absolutely. You’re going to promote some stuff that just as par for the course and everybody expects it. But mark my words, you should not be on 10 summits a month.
Jennie Wright [00:09:31]:
That’s insane. You’re going to kill your list. They are going to become so unresponsive and they’re going to unsubscribe. And if they don’t have subscribe, unsubscribe, they’re just not going to listen to you anymore. So don’t do it. It’s horrible. Another trend that I want to talk about is automation. And I love automation.
Jennie Wright [00:09:49]:
I mean, I’ve had people on this podcast talk about automation. We geek out about automation. I love it, but you can over automate, right? ChatJPT is a great tool, but it is not the end all be all. And what we’re seeing now is, and I talk about these pendulum swings. We we saw it when we had, NFTs and crypto currency and whatnot is the pendulum always swings way too far in one direction. And that’s like, everybody’s doing it. Everybody’s got to do it. NFTs are here to stay, they’re amazing, and then the pendulum swings back to a little bit around normal, center, and we don’t hear so much about it.
Jennie Wright [00:10:26]:
Right? And it just becomes part of the, you know, part of some people’s lives, not everybody’s life. And some people tried it and they’re like, man, not for me, but not everybody has to get on that trend. And one of these trends is using ChatGPT to automate everything or Claude or any of the other AIs out there. And I will tell you that the pendulum swing is still too far to the, too, too far to one side with that. And over automating is going to cause your email list to lack genuine connection. Okay. ChatGPT, Claude, all the others are not going to speak exactly like you, and they’re not going to have the same inflection that you do in your emails, even as good as they get. And there’s a struggle where people do want to interact with a real person and not a robot and not an AI? And you need to look at that and take it into consideration.
Jennie Wright [00:11:18]:
Right? So leaning too heavily on automation could be pushing potential clients away because they feel that they’re just talking to a bot, but you have to strike that perfect balance. Okay. Because I mean, I, yesterday I’m recording this on a Monday and on Sunday I had some time to work yesterday, which was awesome. It was nice and quiet, threw on some Depeche Mode. Anybody knows me, you know, that’s my favorite band. And I was working on automations for 4 lead magnets because I’ve been moving my entire business out of all these different, I guess, platforms and into into GHL or high level. And in doing so, I have to, like, redo a lot of stuff, and also I found a lot of things that could be improved. So yesterday, I’m working on 4 different lead magnets, getting them all ready because I have things that I’m promoting, and I’m working on their auto responder sequences.
Jennie Wright [00:12:16]:
And I’m like, oh God, this auto responder is horrible. Like I wrote it like 2 years ago and it’s crap. Right. So I rewrote it. I did use chat GPT to support me in writing some of them. And then I edited them to add in my own sort of flair, because again, I am not going to over automate with just chat GPT or any of the others, because again, people are not going to recognize that it’s coming from me. Right? So I think that I want to take away from this that marketing, you know, isn’t just about sticking to what everybody else is doing, just because it worked at some point, probably 5 years ago in the past. Right.
Jennie Wright [00:12:55]:
It’s about real connection, real engagement and staying incredibly adaptable. I mean, I just had this conversation with my partner yesterday when he, when, when we chatted, we had a cup of tea and I was talking about a high level and another client was coming on board and so on. He’s like, you know, I remember when you told me that ClickFunnels was the end all be all. And I remember when you told me ActiveCampaign was the way to go. Right. And I moved from Aweber over to ActiveCampaign and I moved out of, it wasn’t lead pages. It was another page builder over to click funnels. And I’m like, yeah, at the time click funnels was the end all be all and click funnels is still amazing in terms of the way that it converts.
Jennie Wright [00:13:33]:
But when I look at my entire tech stack and you’ve heard me talk about tech stacks before, if not go find my podcast on tech stacks, the episode, because I mentioned my entire tech stack in there. But what I found is that in 2024, a lot of the softwares decided to raise their prices exponentially, right? The price of my, you know, the price of certain softwares went up. Now ClickFunnels didn’t go up, but what I didn’t do is I didn’t go to ClickFunnels 2.0. I had ClickFunnels classic, because ClickFunnels 2.0 was another, you know, $30 a month, and I didn’t want to do that. So what I, what I decided was, you know, high level still has a real, like not still, but high level has a great page builder and it’s comparable in a lot of ways to ClickFunnels in my opinion. And this is from a conversion standpoint. And so reducing my monthly costs was really important to me because things are starting to grow. Right.
Jennie Wright [00:14:29]:
So, you know, my list hit a certain level where active campaign wanted to charge extra money. You know, Canva obviously wanted to raise its prices and then they retracted them, which I thought was hilarious, but I love that email. Thank you so much for that. Keeping me on teams, but then charging me more. But my monthly expenditure on my platforms, on my tech stack was getting pretty crazy. And by, moving to go high level, I was saving, oh gosh, like almost $400, $400 USD a month. Okay. And in 2025 with the things that I know that I’m going to be doing and the software that I know that I’m going to need, my costs are going to go up again, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t budget.
Jennie Wright [00:15:11]:
I didn’t want to, I could, but I didn’t want to budget for 2025 adding in all these extra pieces of software and these extra costs. So I thought it was a good idea to, like really bring things down And then I could add those things in next year. The plans for 2025 are nuts. And it, and things are just going to go crazy and I’m excited, but my bank account was like, crap, we’re gonna, we’re gonna need to adjust. So overall, I just want you to look at marketing as something that, you know, what worked 5 years ago doesn’t necessarily work now, except it is cyclical and some things come back, but sticking your foot in your kid’s kiddie pool and covering it with sand and faking a shot of you being in Aruba is never going to be back. So please don’t do that again. And if you are looking at this and you’re looking at the marketing strategies and you’re like, Jenny, this is a really a big struggle for me. I just haven’t figured it out.
Jennie Wright [00:16:02]:
That’s okay. I will tell you that even 12 years in that the figuring out continues to happen, right, because the trends keep changing and the algorithms change and everything else. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed and, like, worried and you’re in your 1st or even your 3rd year, when you get to year 12 or more, like I’m in year 12 going into year 13, I will tell you that the struggles are still really the same, except you just have more tools in your tool chest to figure it out. Right? Because you’ve done this stuff before, or you’ve seen it happen in the past, or you just know what the outcome is going to be because either you tried it or you know somebody who has. And so don’t fret and don’t get discouraged. We’re all dealing with it. We just need to be smart about it. Okay.
Jennie Wright [00:16:46]:
So. As I pull this to a close, because I think it’s really interesting to talk about outdated marketing trends, And I’ll probably do this topic again over time because they just keep happening. I just want to remind you what you’re doing is just you’re, you’re succeeding in succession, right? So you’re looking at what you’re doing now and you’re planning for the future. And what you try now is going to have a long term effect. And so don’t give up. I would say double down, right? Consistency is key. And with consistency, regardless of what you’re doing, you will see progress, whether or not you see the hockey stick of like super big progress, or if you see a nice, you know, sort of like bell curve up, that’s going to depend on what you’re doing, your efforts, your nation, so on. And so when you’re thinking about your marketing, I just really want you to take that into consideration.
Jennie Wright [00:17:33]:
And if you’re feeling overwhelmed by these outdated strategies or you need some help pivoting, growing, connecting to what it is that you’re supposed to be doing, I am here and I would love to connect with you. I would love to help you figure this out. So please go to the show notes or go to jenny wright.com and look at what works to connect with me there and not, you know, 5 years down the line when you’re worried about this, or it’s gotten worse. Okay. And with the Acquire podcast as always, it’s brought to you by the Aud Phonic Podcast Network. And I’d love for you to let me know what you think of the podcast. Drop a review. Let me know what you think and share how we can help.
Jennie Wright [00:18:10]:
So let us know what that looks like for you. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll talk to you all soon. Take care.