Marketing Lessons From The 2024 Solar Eclipse [LNIM262]

Have you ever considered the cosmic dance of a solar eclipse as a masterclass in marketing precision? Join me, Mark Mason, on a journey that connects the celestial mechanics of an eclipse with the meticulous world of product launches. As astronomers chart the stars to witness nature's grand display, we marketers too must craft our strategies with care to captivate our niche audience, ensuring our own moments of triumph in the marketplace. In today's episode, I recount the serene beauty of the eclipse's path of totality in Texas and distill essential marketing insights from this natural marvel, demonstrating the art of anticipation and flawless execution.

But beyond the stars, there's the warmth of human connection—a theme we unravel as we revisit a vibrant meetup for the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast community. Like the fleeting shadow of an eclipse, we remind ourselves that business challenges are but temporary blips on the radar. I'll share tales of overcoming hurdles with the same resilience and awe that my 70-something-year-old mother displayed during her first enchanting encounter with a solar eclipse. It's a blend of heartfelt experiences and strategic savvy that will leave you both enlightened and inspired. So grab your eclipse glasses and let's explore the universe of marketing together.

Chapters

• 0:00 Marketing Lessons From Solar Eclipse
• 14:34 Building Community and Overcoming Obstacles
• 20:44 Mother's First Eclipse Experience

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Episode 262.

Speaker 2: 0:03

Late Night Internet Marketing.

Speaker 1: 0:09

This week on the Late Night Internet Marketing podcast, we finally publish a long overdue episode about the solar eclipse that just happened here in Texas. Actually, it happened a month ago and I'm finally getting the episode out now. But there are some marketing lessons, believe it or not, that we can learn from the total eclipse of the sun. All this and more on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:57

The Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. My friend, yes, you can do it right when it's late at night. At the end of the day, your dreams burn in your sights.

Speaker 3: 1:11

Keep it up and you will find that you're building your business one night at a time and now broadcasting late at night from a little studio in the big state of Texas, your host, mark Mason.

Speaker 1: 1:31

Hey, hey, hey, how is everyone doing? I am your host, mark Mason, and today we're going to talk a little bit about the total eclipse of the sun that happened here in Dallas, texas. Actually, it happened all over the United States, but the total eclipse only happened in a narrow band up through from Mexico up into the Northeast. They call this the path of totality, and if you count all the people in Mexico, all the way up through the United States and into Canada, all the people that are in the path of totality, it was about 31 million people that got to see this thing. Now, I had never before seen a total eclipse.

Speaker 1: 2:19

I've seen lots of partial eclipses, lots of partial eclipses, and as an engineer by training, I know a lot about astronomy and other things that are related to science, because science is my jam when I'm not doing marketing. But I was surprised to learn that a lot of people don't really know what a solar eclipse is, and so, to put it simply, a solar eclipse is a situation where the moon gets exactly between you and the sun and casts a shadow on you, either partially or totally, as in this case. And it's a lot more complicated and interesting than that, because the orbits are elliptical and things are tilted and if you're an astronomer, I think it's super interesting. If you're not an astronomer, that's just a shadow that the moon is casting on the Earth and it is a remarkable thing and it made me wonder as this thing was happening was happening. It's easy for me to say that that's what is going on, because I have the benefit of Galileo and Copernicus and NASA and JPL and all this amazing science that's happened in the last 500 years, but 500 or 600 or a thousand years ago, when eclipses came, it must have been really freaky, because we as a species, when we don't understand something, we try to explain it just the best that we can. Most of the time we make stuff up like Greek gods and stuff to explain things, and so you know, I can imagine it was really weird.

Speaker 1: 4:03

But I thought, since I you know, I wanted an excuse to talk about the eclipse. It was really awesome. We're going to get into that a little bit. I thought my excuse would be there's some marketing lessons buried into the eclipse that we can pull out, and it made me laugh because that's totally an excuse and I'm sure you get that. But there are some marketing things that we can talk about in terms of the eclipse that are kind of interesting.

Speaker 1: 4:29

And I think the first thing that we can talk about in terms of the eclipse is I noticed that for months and months ahead of time, we had discussions about how to prepare for the eclipse, had discussions about how to prepare for the eclipse, what the eclipse was going to look like, what equipment you needed all of the exact moving parts that needed to happen in order for you, the viewer, to successfully watch the eclipse and have the best experience. And what it reminded me of from a marketing standpoint is a product launch. When you go to launch a product and you've got this situation where you need to create the product, plan it out and create it and, even before that, do the market research, and then you need to prepare landing pages and lead magnets and a traffic strategy branding pages and lead magnets and a traffic strategy. You need to usually buy ads and create email sequences and figure out a way to get the product in front of your audience. If you're using a product launch formula approach, you've got timed releases of content that you're worried about and you're doing all this preparation so that on a day or over the course of several days or a couple of weeks you can launch your product. That's exactly like getting prepared for the solar eclipse, and the better that you prepare, the more enjoyable your four and a half minutes of total eclipse are going to be.

Speaker 1: 5:59

That's what we enjoyed. Actually, I'm a little bit off the center line here in Dallas, so we had a couple of minutes of total eclipse and we had no stress. It was easy peasy, we had fun. We sat out by the pool and watch the eclipse. It was totally memorable. We had planned and got my mother up to Dallas in time so that she could watch it with us. I had actually secured special anzi certified glass that we could look through. That's used by welders, so that we wouldn't have to rely on the less expensive solar glasses which we we also used. We considered doing photography, but decided not to do that. You guys know my wife is a photographer, but we did a lot of planning and had a totally enjoyable time. I think likewise, if you put effort into your marketing launches like that and do a tremendous amount of planning around your launch, you can thoroughly enjoy that launch process and do it without the need of having a lot of stress.

Speaker 1: 7:04

The second thing that the eclipse made me think of, which I thought was really interesting, is this was really a niche market inside the United States. A band going all the way across the north to the south were the people that were impacted by this, and if you were selling Eclipse glasses, that's where your niche market was. Now, of course, the partial eclipse was available elsewhere in the United States. That's kind of normal, but the number of people that I know that were outside watching the eclipse in the Dallas area, for example, was approximately 100%. That's a niche market and that's very analogous to what goes on in marketing.

Speaker 1: 7:52

You know, there's this saying that we've always talked about the riches are in the niches, which is unfortunate. That riches doesn't rhyme with niches, but you get the idea. The riches are in the niches and that's where people who need to solve a particular problem that you can communicate with directly. Those people are the ones that need your product and you need to find those people and in the case of this eclipse, those people were actually in this band where totality was happening. That's where all the action was, all the excitement and, sure, there were sales outside of the niche. There were people in Nevada that were buying glasses to watch the partial eclipse.

Speaker 1: 8:39

But the majority of the sales and the highest market penetration for sales of these solar eclipse glasses were definitely in this niche of total eclipse, this path of totality. That happened across the United States, and we know this because we know where that path is and we get ready to do this from a marketing standpoint by doing marketing research, identifying our niche and focusing down on it. We want to be selling to specifically someone, not to everyone. We want to delight a particular customer and, yeah, we will also make sales to other customers. That's inevitable and great and we can have approaches for that. But if we're not selling to somebody, we're effectively selling to nobody. So, niches niches are really important.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Okay, the other thing that I think is really telling is that, in general, if you're working in a niche, some kind of marketing niche whether it's the actual online business niche, like I'm in, or you're in golf, or you're doing whatever you're doing, whatever expertise that you're using to help people solve a problem, whether you're helping people with their blood pressure or diabetes, or you're helping people with their finances whatever niche you're in woodworking, whatever it is those people need tools and, just like everyone that was involved with the solar eclipse absolutely needed eclipse glasses. People in your niche. They need tools. You need to figure out what tools that your people need and help them decide which tools they need to buy. So if you've got a brand around baseball commentary, so let's say that you've got a brand around analyzing what's going on in major league baseball. The people in your niche that are looking to you for commentary on baseball. They also need tools of various kinds. They need merch for your brand and merch for MLB, and there's probably a lot of baseball players in your niche and maybe you niche down and your content is directly targeted at people who play baseball, who also are interested in watching professional baseball.

Speaker 1: 11:05

However you're doing it, there are people that need merchandise. You need to help them. Help people understand what it is that they need, discover things that maybe they weren't even aware of, new tools and new products and new opportunities for them to up their game, whatever it is that they're doing and help them sort through all that stuff and decide what the right product for them is and establish affiliate or influencer relationships with those brands. Just like the people in the eclipse needed glasses, your people need tools and I'll tell you what the niche inside the niche on this eclipse thing was the photographers. So I happened to go down to my favorite photography place here in Dallas competitive camera shout out to those guys they are absolutely amazing. Ask for Eugene at competitive camera and tell him that Mark sent you. That dude is amazing. And he was covered up, literally covered up. I went in the store and they were covered up with people buying special solar filters and other photography equipment so that they could photograph the eclipse. Because those people interested in that eclipse they needed special tools. And you can bet that if you are a photography influencer or you had a photography blog or you were creating photography content on YouTube during this time, you were taking advantage of that event and you were selling merchandise or influencing people to buy particular products.

Speaker 1: 12:49

You know, the final thing that I'll leave you with from the eclipse that I thought was interesting was that you needed to be careful and you had to take a lot of safety measures from the eclipse and from a marketing standpoint, we need to do absolutely the same thing People who were watching the eclipse. They needed to have properly certified safety glasses. They need to make sure they didn't forget and they weren't careless and didn't accidentally look around the glasses or forget to put the glasses on and look up at the sun, and so forth. Marketers, we need to be more careful about security measures like two-factor authentication, easy-to-guess passwords, locking down our email, making sure we have a way to recover accounts if they're compromised, and so forth. We need to be very careful about that because most of us online entrepreneurs our entire business and if you're doing this to support your family, your entire livelihood, is an electronic situation online that you need to protect and you need to be taking measures to do that. You need to be implementing two-factor, you need to be staying up to date with security patches on your computer and all these things. We don't really talk about them so much, but more and more I hear stories of even people that I know, love and respect that have account compromises happen to them even when they're careful. So it's doubly important for you to keep things locked down and, just like you're making sure that you have ANSI certified solar eclipse viewing glasses, you need to make sure that you're using two-factor authentication and great passwords on all of your accounts.

Speaker 1: 14:34

The final thing I'll leave you with this sense of community that you saw with the solar eclipse, like on my block, we actually had a block party and that was a great thing. I wasn't able to attend because I was busy doing my own thing, but that was a cool deal and people from my neighborhood got together and they watched the solar eclipse together, building a sense of community. You should be doing that with your brand. My favorite story around this was one time many years ago, I reached out to listeners of the late night internet marketing podcast and invited them to join me for a beer at a local pub. Now, at that time, I was a small podcast but I had listeners in the Dallas area, which is kind of remarkable because this podcast is listened to in over a hundred countries. Listeners are spread out all over the world. I don't know where you are right now, but chances are you're not in Dallas, but there were a handful of people, which was super cool. I invited them to a pub. I bought appetizers, they bought their own alcohol and we sat around a table and there was more than a dozen people there just talking about their online businesses. This was way back in, probably in 2010 or 2011,.

Speaker 1: 15:48

Around that time frame, these kind of meetups and things can be really cool, and I think you might be surprised, if you offer those kind of things to your community, how they'll be interested in taking advantage of that, maybe even in some cases driving relatively long distances to come make a connection. People crave this sort of community, and you can't quite get all the way there. Online, online community is great, but you can't get all the way there, and so if you do things in the real world IRL as the gamers say then that provides a significant value to your community, no matter what niche you're in. That's something that I think could be considered, and you can do that in a way that is not just for hanging out, but you can offer value. You can do an AMA session that way. I think. Ask Me Anything. Sessions are really cool, and in an intimate gathering like that you can really dive deep into some questions that you might not normally be willing to answer in a broader session. You can also have prepared content. You say, for the first 15 minutes I'm going to teach about this and then after that we'll talk about whatever you guys want to talk about. Those kinds of things are great. Maybe I'll leave you with one more thing here.

Speaker 1: 17:13

You know, metaphorically, philosophically and metaphorically at the time that that solar eclipse occurred in the Dallas area. It was amazing. I was amazed. I'd never seen a total eclipse before. I didn't even realize that I would be able to look at this without eye protection. I hadn't thought about it, to be honest with you, and it was creepy dark and, just like they say, the birds stop chirping. I mean it's really strange. Okay, the pets started acting weird.

Speaker 1: 17:49

Everything that you read about that happens during a solar eclipse. It happened. I mean this is real right. And I got to wondering what must this had been like 700 years ago, like we were talking about? And I tell you what it was like. People thought either the gods were angry or the world was ending, or both, because a shadow had been cast upon them.

Speaker 1: 18:15

This happens to solo entrepreneurs in businesses. Something happens you get locked out of your email account, you lose your biggest client and it feels like a shadow has been cast upon you. That's what it feels like, just like the eclipse. But if you understand, like we do now, it's just an eclipse, right, the moon is going to move off, the sun is going to come out tomorrow, to quote Annie, and everything's going to be okay. It's not that you can just do nothing usually, but you'll be able to work through it and these things, whatever these business obstacles are, will resolve themselves after an amount of effort and time combined together to move them out of the way. Right, you need to make the effort, you need to let time go by, but eventually these business struggles will be resolved by you.

Speaker 1: 19:16

That means this is not the time to quit when the eclipse comes. That's not the time to say oh goodbye, cruel world, I give up. The sun is gone. It's time to be aware of the fact that you can work through these things, overcome them, overcome your obstacles in your business and be successful on the other side. A lot of times, the only way forward in business is through, and the same is true for the eclipse. Okay, that's what I've got for you today. Thank you for indulging me with the eclipse episode as late as it is. I'm actually finally posting this a month late, but, uh, I've been thinking about it since it happened and I wanted to share it with you, just in case you're in a part of the world where you didn't get to see that Ciao.

Speaker 3: 20:07

You can do it right when it's late at night You've been listening to the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. Be sure to visit LNIMpodcastcom today to leave feedback for Mark, Download special bonus content, access the show notes and more. See you there. Until then, go and make some great progress on your internet business one night at a time.

Speaker 1: 20:44

Yeah, so the eclipse was super fun. I'll tell you what my most fun part was my mom, who's, you know, getting 70 something years old now uh, she had never seen uh much. I don't know if she'd ever seen it before, but she had certainly, like me, never seen a total eclipse and she was blown away. In fact, she's still talking about it a month later. She, she just it just blew her mind, and it was so fun for me to see her reaction to that. She's not a science person, so she wasn't jaded by all the science education, right. What she saw was that the sun was there and then it disappeared. And, of course, she's a very smart person. She knows what's going on, she sees the news broadcast, she's educated about what the root cause is. But from her perspective, as a person whose job is not to think about miraculous things all the time, mine is she was stunned by it and that made me so happy to watch that. That was my personal highlight for the eclipse ciao late night internet marketing.