⃛Level Up ↴
Good advice from James Clear
There are at least 4 types of wealth:
- Financial wealth (money)
- Social wealth (status)
- Time wealth (freedom)
- Physical wealth (health)
Be wary of jobs that lure you in with 1 and 2, but rob you of 3 and 4.
You usually expend 1&2 to compensate for the lack of 3&4.
Can you over-communicate with clients?
I really like this:
Marketing’s value proposition for a brand is not growth but differentiation.
Differentiation as a way to become visible and appealing to the customer, thus driving tangible growth.
Differentiation comes about primarily through story-telling; effective brand narratives that engage the customer
via MarTech
This chart is interesting because I feel like brands firmly focus on the items in the middle. Customers just want to be rewarded for being loyal shoppers and fans in a way that makes them feel like a human rather than a number.
via EMARKETER
When asked how Dave Matthews Band sells out so many shows…
Dave Matthews’ line is always, “we only have 35,000 fans, they just go to every show.”
This is the goal—the dream.
Make something so good that a core group loves it to the point of never getting enough.
Yes, it’s a joke (probably), but it’s rooted in a fandom that puts the fan in fanatical.
Going for scale is flashy and en vogue.
Going for depth can be more fun for everyone.
via the Celtics Talk podcast
I agree with Rushkoff on this:
The value of this technology in creative work is not to come up with the ideal commercial product but to show us perfect examples of what to avoid.
Create it yourself.
Create it with AI.
If you can’t tell the difference, start again.
(Or automate that task and find somewhere else to add value.)
Let your human show.
Average marketing budgets have fallen to 7.7% of overall company revenue, down from 9.1% in 2023
Budgets typically lag the economy, but can be a leading indicator of advertiser confidence.
This could be a leading indicator for smaller margins from coming price cuts too.
In the four years preceding the pandemic, average marketing budgets were 11% of overall revenue. In the four years since, they’ve dropped to an anemic 8.2%.
This is from a survey of CMOs, so a specific class of business.
via MarketingTech
LinkedIn has reduced the size of link preview images for organic posts, while maintaining larger preview images for sponsored content.
I noticed the smaller image size on a client’s post the other day but thought it was a bug or an image smaller than the recommended size, turns out it’s the new normal.
A reminder that social platforms don’t like external links. Unless you’re paying.
Might grocers' price cuts ease inflation and the current vibe-cession?
Target began cutting prices on 5,000 grocery store items
Walmart, which started lowering prices to pre-pandemic levels in March.
Amazon said it was slashing grocery prices at its Fresh chain by up to 30%
Aldi has begun reducing prices on more than 250 items
Walgreens lowered prices on more than 1,500 items
Voting with dollars:
in addition to eating out less and spending less at the grocery store, many price-sensitive consumers are switching from brand-name to in-house items.
via The Daily Upside
All ads I want to try
Around half of streaming viewers have taken some action upon seeing a pause ad
…
67% said they’d interacted with an ad that they could click on to receive information via an email or device, while explorable ads and “click to buy” ads also saw high engagement, at 62% and 58% each. QR codes, meanwhile, were less popular: just 36% of survey respondents indicated that they’d interacted with one.
via Marketing Brew
Google is emailing advertisers to notify them it will soon begin automatically pausing low-activity keywords.
According to the email, positive keywords in search ad campaigns will be considered low-activity if they haven’t generated impressions in over a year.
This should make account manager easier and cleaner.
But I think it’s also a low-key signal that:
- We’ll continue to have less control in ad platforms
- Keywords are on their way out as the core of Google Ads targeting
And yes, this is mostly thanks to AI.
I posted the other day about sharing your strategy with everyone, then I read a Seth Godin piece that included this bit:
When you give away your work by building the network, you’re not giving it away at all. You’re building trust, authority, and a positive cycle of better.
Sharing is caring.
“Running with scissors is a cardio exercise that can increase your heart rate and require concentration and focus,” says Google’s new AI search feature. “Some say it can also improve your pores and give you strength.”
…
Google suggested that if you’re making pizza but the cheese won’t stick, you could add about an eighth of a cup of glue to the sauce to “give it more tackiness.”
At its core, AI is only as good as its training data. Why would we expect any different from a model that averages the internet?
It is only superhuman when it comes to speed.
via TechCrunch
Share Your Strategy with Everyone
It’s tempting to keep it to ourselves, but making it collaborative can be much more helpful. Especially in industries and relationships (like agencies) where this isn’t the norm.
Invite them in. Craft a strategy together.
Telling our story well and sharing openly brings together more allies, horsepower, and willingness to take that story to new heights.
when corporations talk about values, was it because of ethics? Or aesthetics?
Is it a value or a tactic?
It’ll come out eventually. One compounds goodwill, one erodes it.
via Mister Yam by Yeng Tan 📚