8 Boring Marketing Strategies That Always Make Money

SUMMARY

Eric Siu presents eight proven marketing strategies—merging timeless events and email with emerging video and podcasting—to drive consistent ROI and growth for marketers in 2025.

STATEMENTS

Hosting dinners and in-person events fosters deep human connections, leading to high-value clients like Lyft through face-to-face interactions.
Curating events with peers at similar levels, such as AI founders, ensures meaningful discussions and networking in intimate settings.
Webinars offer high ROI by reaching large audiences at low cost, generating qualified leads even with paid promotion.
Email marketing delivers an average 36:1 ROI, nurturing non-buyers and staying top-of-mind with value-driven content.
The nine-word email, like "Are you still in market to buy a yacht?", reactivates leads and drives significant revenue.
Direct mail achieves the highest ROI for 84% of large companies in 2024, standing out in a digital world with personalized physical items.
Short-form videos build brand awareness and mindshare, as seen in Cle's viral content prompting app inquiries in comments.
Maximizing organic reach on platforms like YouTube requires strong ideas, thumbnails, and retention to capitalize on fleeting opportunities.
Search everywhere optimization adapts to fragmented attention across Amazon, YouTube, Reddit, and beyond, beyond traditional Google SEO.
Podcasting generates multi-format content for social distribution, boosting awareness and top-of-mind presence for long-term sales.

IDEAS

Even introverts can leverage in-person events for massive business gains by prioritizing human connection over personality type.
Starting small with low-budget events, like a dinner with chips, builds confidence and scales to larger, high-impact gatherings.
Webinars and live shopping democratize high-volume outreach, turning modest ad spends into qualified leads with strong LTV.
Email's power lies in subtle nurturing: provide value in most sends, then occasionally probe readiness to buy.
Creative direct mail, such as customized swords for M&A pitches, can yield 99% response rates by evoking emotional resonance.
Viral short-form videos indirectly drive sales by dominating conversations and recruiting influencers from niche communities.
Organic reach is a temporary goldmine; optimize packaging like thumbnails to squeeze maximum shots on goal before algorithms tighten.
Distribution trumps product uniqueness in AI eras, where entertaining or controversial tactics secure attention amid commoditization.
Attention fragmentation demands "search everywhere" tactics, treating platforms like Reddit or Pinterest as vital search engines.
Podcasts act as content factories, spawning short- and mid-form clips that turn unpredictable social hits into sustained awareness.

INSIGHTS

Timeless marketing thrives on human fundamentals like connection and tangibility, outlasting digital fads in an AI-saturated landscape.
Blending curation with accessibility in events amplifies value exchange, positioning hosts as indispensable connectors in networks.
High-ROI channels like email and webinars excel by respecting buyer timelines, transforming passive audiences into active opportunities.
Physical media's resurgence counters digital overload, proving personalized artifacts forge deeper impressions than ephemeral screens.
Viral mechanics in short-form content shift from direct sales to ecosystem building, where mindshare fuels organic recruitment and growth.
Adaptive optimization across ecosystems ensures resilience, viewing evolving search as a multifaceted game rather than a single battlefield.

QUOTES

"You cannot beat face to face interaction. Human to human again if you're introverted you're extroverted we all desire human connection."
"The average ROI for email marketing was 36 to 1. In some cases, it's 45 to 1."
"Direct mail had the highest ROI of any marketing channel for 84% of 10,000 plus employee companies."
"On YouTube alone, podcasts are receiving 1 billion views a month. And I'm talking about short form, okay? From podcast creators."
"The game here is you want to stay top of mind for people and that's a combination of strategies that we mention from this series."

HABITS

Host intimate dinners or events with themed discussions among peers to build networks and generate leads.
Send periodic nine-word emails to past leads, checking market readiness without overwhelming recipients.
Invest in webinars quarterly, blending paid promotion with email lists to acquire targeted sign-ups.
Create short-form video content weekly, focusing on viral hooks to spark comment-driven inquiries.
Repurpose podcast episodes into multi-platform clips, monitoring organic hits to refine distribution.

FACTS

A single San Francisco dinner led to acquiring Lyft as a client through targeted networking.
Neil Patel generates about $400,000 per webinar, leveraging a large email list for high returns.
The nine-word yacht email concept drove $100 million in revenue by re-engaging dormant prospects.
Cle's short-form video on virtual dates garnered 4 million views, flooding comments with app requests.
Podcast short-form clips on YouTube alone attract 1 billion monthly views, steadily increasing.

REFERENCES

Ali Abdaal's YouTube channel on productivity.
Neil Patel's podcast co-hosting and private events.
Single Grain ad agency for AI-forward marketing.
ClickFlow for AI-powered SEO content generation.

HOW TO APPLY

Identify 8-10 peers at your professional level and theme an event around a hot topic like AI; invite them to a low-cost dinner, allocating 20 minutes per person for hot-seat challenges and 2-minute feedback rounds to spark connections.
Promote a webinar via paid ads targeting your ideal client profile, aiming for $8-9 per sign-up; structure it with high-value insights and a clear call-to-action, tracking leads against customer lifetime value for ROI assessment.
Build an email list through lead magnets, then nurture with 80% value content and 20% promotional probes; craft nine-word check-ins every 90 days to re-engage, measuring open rates and conversions.
Design personalized direct mail like custom letters or novelty items tied to recipient pain points; test small batches for response rates, scaling creative elements that evoke emotion for higher engagement.
Record weekly podcasts with a co-host, extracting short-form clips for TikTok and Reels; optimize thumbnails and hooks for retention, repurposing mid-form segments for LinkedIn to maximize cross-platform shots on goal.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Boring, consistent marketing strategies blending human touch with digital reach guarantee sustainable ROI amid trends.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Prioritize in-person events early, even modestly, to overcome introversion and forge lasting client relationships.
Revive email sequences with direct readiness checks to unlock revenue from overlooked leads.
Experiment with tangible direct mail creatives to cut through digital noise and boost response rates.
Harness short-form video virality for indirect brand building, recruiting from creator communities.
Expand podcasting into a content pipeline, distributing clips across platforms for unpredictable awareness wins.

MEMO

In an era dominated by flashy algorithms and viral stunts, marketing veteran Eric Siu argues that the most reliable paths to profit lie in the unassuming strategies that have quietly powered businesses for decades. As the host of the "Leveling Up" podcast and founder of Single Grain, Siu draws from his own triumphs—like landing Lyft as a client from a single San Francisco dinner—to champion tactics that blend human warmth with digital precision. These "boring" methods, he insists, deliver outsized returns in 2025 by focusing on enduring principles: connection, consistency, and curation.

Siu begins with the irreplaceable power of face-to-face gatherings, recounting how even a cash-strapped 26-year-old version of himself turned a half-eaten bag of chips into a networking triumph. By assembling peers facing similar challenges—say, AI founders at an intimate restaurant dinner—he created spaces for raw exchanges, where 20-minute hot seats and quick feedback loops sparked deals. Scaling to larger Miami events with 200 attendees, Siu emphasized themed networking rounds, from house dinners to AI deep dives, proving that curated intimacy trumps scale. For introverts wary of the spotlight, his advice is straightforward: start small, cover costs to ease attendance, and position yourself as the value-providing connector, as he did when productivity YouTuber Ali Abdaal marveled at his expansive network.

Shifting to scalable outreach, Siu spotlights webinars as a low-cost powerhouse, especially in B2B, where his co-host Neil Patel nets $400,000 per session. Even with modest lists, targeted ads yielding $8 sign-ups can generate 5-10 qualified leads, far outweighing expenses given high customer lifetimes. Echoing successes in China's live shopping boom, now surging in the U.S. via TikTok, Siu urges marketers to revive these formats amid digital slop. Complementing this is email's evergreen dominance—a Litmus survey pegs its ROI at 36:1, nurturing the 99% of audiences not yet buying. Siu shares the genius of the nine-word email ("Are you still in market?") that propelled $100 million in yacht sales, a tactic he’s used to fill exclusive events with Neil Patel.

Yet Siu doesn't dismiss the new; he integrates it wisely. Direct mail, far from obsolete, topped ROI charts for 84% of large firms in 2024, per Compare Media, as physical tangibles pierce AI-driven inboxes. One M&A hustler’s customized swords, metaphorically saluting "battle-scarred" targets, hit 99% responses. Short-form video, exemplified by Cle's 4-million-view clips prompting frantic app queries in comments, builds mindshare through controversy and recruitment from creator hubs like Whop. Organic reach on YouTube or LinkedIn demands sharp packaging—thumbnails, hooks, 30-second retention—while distribution edges out product in commoditizing markets.

Finally, Siu elevates podcasting as a content engine, with YouTube shorts alone drawing a billion monthly views. His "Marketing School" sessions with Patel spawn clips that explode unpredictably—one Instagram Reel nears a million views—keeping brands top-of-mind for that eventual sale. As attention fragments across Amazon, Reddit, and beyond, "search everywhere optimization" becomes essential, treating each platform as a battlefield. Siu's core lesson: in shifting sands, combine these reliables—events for depth, podcasts for breadth—to outpace trends, fostering sustainable growth that feels anything but boring.