Welcome back to Marketing Qualified. Here’s what we’re covering this week:

• The rise of ”The Guy Mafia.” Anonymous Twitter accounts are blowing up and generating millions of dollars with their niche business content. Why it's working and what you can learn from them.

• Your marketing textbooks lied to you. The concept of a simple buyer's journey is a myth. We’ll dive into what buyer behavior actually looks like and how to reframe your thinking around it.

👥 The rise of ”The Guy Mafia.”

Have you ever been scrolling Twitter and come across an anonymous account that seems super successful? If you have, then you probably stumbled upon the group known as “The Guy Mafia.”

Who’s The Guy Mafia?

It’s a group of anonymous Twitter influencers who post business-related content. Most go by some variation of the name “The [insert topic here] Guy.”

These accounts have become extremely popular in the past 2-3 years, and their owners are making millions off of their profiles.

Some members include accounts like:

The Wolf of Franchises

Car Dealership Guy 

The Real Estate God 

Their content is high-quality, they have a ton of followers, and their posts get great engagement.

Here’s why these accounts work.

What makes The Guy Mafia so successful? These are the main drivers:

1) They tell you exactly what type of content to expect.

It’s right there in their profile name. They’re very upfront with their value proposition. As soon as you see their profile, you know what kind of information you will receive.

2) They’re hyper-focused.

They pick a topic and stick to it. Wolf of Franchises only talks about franchises. Car dealership guy only talks about selling cars.

3) They promise exclusive content.

People love learning information that other people don’t know. The Guy Mafia promises their followers industry secrets, insider info, and unique data they can’t get anywhere else.

What you should learn.

Members of the guy mafia have cracked the code when it comes to content creation. Here’s what you can learn from them.

1) Great content is king.

You don't need a well-known brand or name to build an audience and get noticed. These accounts have managed to amass hundreds of thousands of followers using anonymous profiles.

Audiences care about getting high-quality content. They don’t care what brand publishes that content. Focus on creating great content that speaks to people.

2) Riches in niches.

If you're trying to speak to everyone, you’ll end up talking to no one. Focus on the area you’re an expert in and go super deep on that. Share tips, insider information, and unique insights. The more specific, the better.

3) Build community.

Members of The Guy Mafia have built communities of raving fans around areas of common interest. Figure out how you can do the same. Engage with your audience. Create a feeling of community around your product or brand.

📰 In the news this week.

📈 How pros do conversion rate optimization.

🏆 Google selling Google Domains won't impact your SEO or Google rankings.

▶️ YouTube shares insights into key consumption trends.

🔎 ChatGPT app can now search the web — but only via Bing.

💰 YouTube Ads: Unlocking high impact at minimal cost.

😵‍💫 Your marketing textbook lied to you. Here’s what the buyer’s journey actually looks like.

If you work in marketing, you’re very familiar with the concept of the buyer’s journey. It's the steps someone goes through before buying a product or service.

Usually, the journey is shown to look something like this:

It’s clear, only has a handful of steps, and moves linearly.

And hey, we wish the process was actually this straightforward. But unfortunately, it's not.

A simple graphic like this is an excellent tool for understanding the concept of the buyer’s journey at a high level. But in the real world, buyer behavior is much more complex.

Forrester did a study and found that B2B buyer behavior looks more like this:

If your eyes hurt looking at this chart, don’t worry. Ours did too.

Our takeaways

Let’s jump into the main takeaways from this chart.

1) This sh*t is hard!

The B2B buying process is complicated! One glance at that chart, and that becomes very clear. Marketing is about delivering the right people, the right content, in the right medium, at the right time in their journey. That’s hard!

Cut yourself and your team some slack if you don’t have it all figured out yet. This job ain’t easy!

2) Know YOUR buyer.

Certain parts of this map will be more important depending on your industry. Different types of buyers care about different things.

Study your specific audience. Talk to them. Deeply understand what they care about. Then deliver that.

3) You can’t be an expert at everything.

Look at that chart. There are dozens of elements to it. You’re not going to be an expert in all of them. Every marketing team has finite time and resources. Choose your battles and focus on the most important things to your type of buyers.

4) You’re going to have to try different things.

Again, buyer behavior is complicated. What works in one phase might not work in another. But you need to be systematic to determine what works and what doesn’t. Break the buyer’s journey up into chunks. Then focus on each piece. Only try to optimize one thing at a time. Run different experiments until you find things that work.

😂 Marketing meme of the week.

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