4 tactics from CMOs on maintaining a healthy marketing funnel in tough times

• Bottom funnel traffic started as top-of-funnel, don’t cut your discovery efforts.

Those upper-funnel ads are necessary for lower-funnel ads in places like search to work.

• Make sure any low-cost and no-cost avenues are fully optimized

• Measure on the right time frame

• Be proactive talking with leadership

As the name of this blog might suggest, I’m big on curiosity.

“It’s lo-fi chill electronic music” is the aisle where you find things at Home Depot. “It makes you nostalgic for something that didn’t happen” makes you curious.

invoking something people wish they had, wish they had back, or wish they knew. It exposes a gulf that an audience would agree exists between what they know or feel now, and what they would like to know or feel. It is specific, not general. It is a gap they have to fill

Advertising accounted for 9% of Amazon’s revenue in Q3 (up 19% from Q2). That’s compared to 40% of revenue from their online store.

It accounts for 12% of Walmart’s profits.

Everything is an ad platform now.

Because…

Retail profit margins tend to be slim – in the 3% to 4% range. The margin on ad sales is usually 70% to 90%

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 227,000 in November, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.2 percent

Employment trended up in health care, leisure and hospitality, government, and social assistance. Retail trade lost jobs.

Per CNBC, gains are due to:

the effects of a significant labor strike and violent storms in the Southeast receded

The simplest law of pricing

The price paid will always be less than the value it creates for the purchaser. And the price is never more than the amount the purchaser can exchange.

“But, our server is FIVE times slower. There is no silver bullet that is going to fix that. We’re going to have to use a lot of ‘lead bullets.’”

they had to build a better product. No silver bullets, only lead bullets.

Silver bullets are flashy and exciting and fun. And probably just distractions.

Lipstick on a pig, as it were.

‘Immediately recognizable’ is the key. What do you have that is?

As for rockstars, so for brands (because they’re basically the same).

Bonus points if what’s immediately recognizable about your brand is not specific to your industry or product.

To expand on the approach of peak media, the peak was probably 2023.

People worldwide spent less time with media across all categories except mobile (which remained the same) in H1 2024 as compared with H1 2023

via EMARKETER

The status quo, relative to alternatives, likely will get worse as the pace of innovation increases.

The status quo provides diminishing returns.

To add subtlety is to spend extra time, energy and money on an aspect of the project that (by definition) won’t be specifically recognized by most people.

Subtlety, while expensive to add, increases the chances that their simple answer will be Yes.

Subtlety is a signal of care. Care invested in the project—whatever form it takes.

Like brands, subtlety is expensive now, but cheap later.

Abstract for the paper Brand Teasing: How Brands Build Strong Relationships by Making Fun of Their Consumers🗞️, emphasis mine:

Popular brands like Wendy’s, Postmates, and RyanAir have gained notoriety by making fun of their consumers, but is this an effective strategy to build strong consumer relationships? Across 11 (seven pre-registered) studies, using lab data, field data, and a variety of analytical approaches, the current research demonstrates that teasing communication increases consumer engagement with and connection to the brand compared to merely funny or neutral communication. These effects occur because consumers anthropomorphize brands more when they use teasing communication. This leads to greater engagement with brand messages and greater self-brand connection (SBC). We also leverage the interpersonal teasing literature to distinguish between prosocial and antisocial teases and highlight an important boundary condition. Specifically, we demonstrate that while prosocial teasing evokes a positive human schema, antisocial teasing, although still anthropomorphic, activates a negative human schema, which reduces connection to the brand. As a result, antisocial teases lose their relational advantage over purely funny communication. This work contributes to the streams of research on brand humor, anthropomorphism, and consumer–brand relationships. It also provides actionable implications by demonstrating a novel antecedent to consumer–brand connection and the boundaries within which these positive effects are expected to occur.

Here’s a good recap from Today in Digital Marketing

Despite fears of skittishness, US consumers poured a record amount of cash into online retail on Black Friday.

Unsurprising

The election ended, holiday proximity realization set in, and emotional releases / coping mechanisms were ripe for the having.

I’m guessing the election impact caused this year’s holiday shopping to be a bit more like ye olden days (when it didn’t start in October).

The whole podcast linked to here is worth listening to, if only to hear a true infovore’s approach to information discovery and self-knowledge.

Tyler Cowen’s core principles of economics:

• Incentives matter
• There’s always an opportunity cost (aka no free lunch)

you create the conditions for people to do the things they’ve always wanted to do

Seth Godin on the status games aspect of strategy

Forrester has made its 2025 predictions 🔮

In: “Brand smart”
Out: Brand safety

embracing new practices like swapping keyword exclusion lists with lists of publishers to include in their campaigns.

Out: TikTok ban in 2025
In (again): SEO-powered AI

Out: In-housing
In: Agencies (out-housing? (depends on the agency, I guess))

Welcome to the totally predictable ad market circus

Rather than normalcy, we’re finding huge spikes of inefficiency as everybody scrambles to crunch ad campaigns in before the big BFCM weekend.

Most platform cost per metrics are up and brands are trying to make up for lost time.

Customer mindset is boomeranging post-election.

Enjoy some turkey today and slow down a bit.