When a potential customer visits your site, they aren’t trying to talk themselves out of becoming a customer. They’re trying to talk themselves into it.

They have a list of objections they are just waiting to raise and run.

Your job is to answer each one. And even then they still may not convert.

“After years of post-pandemic revenge spending, consumers are becoming more prudent as they face economic uncertainty, still-high interest rates, and vehicle prices that remain elevated,”

Although the U.S. economy is fairly strong, Americans’ perceptions and priorities have changed, leaving many still uncertain, especially in an election year. 

Vehicle affordability in the U.S. is “very stretched”

Cars are big ticket items, making this trend more apparent.

Elsewhere in the market you may see a widening divide between luxury and value with a shrinking middle market.

We find that experiencing positive emotion at the outset of an online product search primes emotionally congruent thoughts. This priming makes consumers more likely to use positive emotion keywords (e.g., a happy book) than neutral keywords (e.g., a paperback book) to describe the product they are searching for.

As a result, consumers are more likely to click on paid search ads if they used a positive emotion keyword rather than a neutral keyword in their query.

People in good moods use happy words in their searches, which can lead to improved ad performance.

(I LOVE this story the Do Lectures shared in their email newsletter, in partnership with Hiut Denim.)

It was the #2 rated hotel on Trip Advisor from thousands of reviews.

• It is not fancy.
• It does not have deep pockets.
• Even the deep end of its pool isn’t that deep.

But, it did not play by the rules.

It understood it could not win by trying to be better. Instead, it chose to be different. But it realised there is an art to being different.

Being different is powerful when you understand it must come from a truth you can uniquely bring to life.

A truth.

Kids of a certain age don’t give a hoot about luxury.

• They don’t care about the thread count on the Egyptian cotton pillows.
• They don’t care about the muted pastel shades of wall paint that are designed to relax you and make you feel calm.
• They don’t care about the wine cellar with 15,000 bottles of fine wine from France and beyond.

On the other hand, they do care about Lollipops. Now, they MATTER.

Which is why by the very average-looking pool at the Castle Magic Hotel, there’s a bright red phone that has a sign above it that says, “Popsicle Hotline.”

And when the kids pick up the phone, somebody answers and says, “Popsicle Hotline! We’ll be right out.”

And moments later, somebody comes out wearing a suit, carrying a silver tray loaded with grape and cherry and orange popsicles. They present them to you wearing white gloves, like an English butler, all for free.

Someone at Castle Hotel had an important insight:

• Kids make the decisions.
• Adults provide the transportation.
• And, if they behave, they get to pick up the bill at the end of the stay.

If it’s down to the kids where to stay, and, OH, IT IS, they don’t stay at the boring Four Seasons.

The ‘Popsicle Hotline’ didn’t cost $33 million. The ‘Popsicle Hotline’ provided a peak moment for the kids. And you can be sure, that kids will tell their friends about the ‘Popsicle Hotline’, especially if their friends’ parents are making them suffer by staying at the Four Seasons.

Ryan Holiday writes about the spectacle:

it captures attention, sparks curiosity, and draws people in

At his bookstore they built a book tower of 2,000 books

it’s also probably one of the single best marketing and business decisions we made in the whole store. Because it’s the number one thing people come into the store to take pictures of.

The spectacle gets you noticed. It’s the hook.

The key is not to become a P.T. Barnum and have nothing but spectacle.

The spectacle hooks.
The substance lands.

Survey says…

80% of respondents said cost savings is more important than convenience, with 42% ranking saving money as their top priority

It’s all about the deals this holiday season.

There is plenty of speculation floating around that the middle of the market (or the middle of everything) is hollowing out. Meaning the split is increasingly becoming luxury or discount.

The middle is a tough place to get stuck. But maybe it’s where the next wave of opportunity lies.

Search Ads Campaign enables sophisticated keyword-based ads which specifically target TikTok's search results page. From a user experience perspective, the ads are the same, but for advertisers, a whole host of new features and targeting capabilities are now available.

Search is splintering, with TikTok one of the growing channels for younger searchers. Now the Trend Machine wants to splinter some of those search ad budgets.

I like this idea from the Alt Marketing School newsletter:

Create an Objection Smasher page or post on your site. This landing page should list the top 5-10 reasons why people don’t buy your product or why they choose another business over yours.

You can’t be for everyone, so why not make it super clear who you aren’t for?

The marketing trend of 2024:

In: AI (& context)
Out: Control

Early this year this was based on lots of prediction posts and podcasts (& my own crystal ball).

As the year has unfolded it’s been based on reality.

If you’re chasing “better” analytics or attribution, you’re behind the curve.

Our culture leans toward the idea that we should intervene and that our results should be visible. To manipulate and control without really questioning why we are doing what we do. Much of the time, I have found you only need to fix things if they have been put out of kilter in the first place.

As in gardening, so in marketing.

The easiest way to prove you’re working is to do stuff. Pull levers, twist knobs, change settings, etc. But campaigns and messages take time.

Don’t change things for the sake of looking busy.

Algorithms as plants.

My major design goal here was…I wanted to push controls, as much as possible, down the screen. So I want the most frequently accessed things to be accessible when you’re holding the phone in one hand and you just want to hit something with your thumb. 

This is pretty common in apps now, it should be way more common on websites.

Respect the thumb zone (image via Smashing Magazine)

that’s really the single core question about the future of Generative AI - is this a new general purpose tool, where one product from one company does the work of hundreds of pieces of software from hundreds of companies, or is this a generic technology that will enable features inside products from hundreds or thousands of companies?

I lean towards the latter.

It’s easier to imagine AI turbocharging all kinds of existing tools and features than a general purpose AI platform that gets mass adoption.

I think most companies fear that they don’t have enough of a young person’s perspective. 

But…like so many things in this world, it comes down to trying to have a mix of old thinking and new thinking. 

The “youth” are like catnip for marketers, but it’s imperative to know who your actual audience is.

Your message needs to reflect your audience.

The manager looks at him and says, “HA! You think I am in the music business? No. I’m in the Iron fucking Maiden business.” The publishing industry? The retail business? These are not the businesses I am in–just like you’re not in the coffee industry or B2B. No, you’re in the business of you. You’re in the business of serving your customers in your city with your unique offering.

What matters is their relationship with their fans. That’s who they are in service of. That’s the job. And so it goes for all of us, whatever we do.

Everything is customer service.

Know who you’re serving and what they expect.

Business is a series of promises.

Success is based on delivering.

Word spreads because taste aligns…not because of wild interruption.

Find the stories that mesh.

Adobe’s holiday shopping predictions are in:

major discounts this season–up to 30% off listed prices–as retailers compete for consumer dollars

Biggest discount wins?

share of the most expensive goods is set to increase by 19% compared to pre-season trends—driven in large part by competitive discounts

Inflation and price sensitivity who?

I think post-election holiday shopping is gonna pop like a champagne cork.

This.

If you try to be for everyone, you end up being for no one.

Or, as Vonnegut said, “if you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”