TLDR MARKETING 2024-05-08

2024 SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING REPORT

A new report from VistaPrint and Wix takes a look at the state of SMB marketing based on a survey of small business owners and consumers. Social apps are now where most people find information about brands, while SMBs are increasingly investing in social media ads. Traditional marketing tactics, such as direct mail and outdoor signage, are still effective at getting consumers to visit a small business. Promotional discounts, loyalty offers, and regular communication all make consumers more likely to shop at a small business. The report contains additional findings about marketing tactics for different age groups and how SMBs are investing in marketing.

AMAZON ADS ANNOUNCES THREE NEW STREAMING TV AD FORMATS

Amazon Ads has unveiled an expanded suite of new interactive and shoppable ad formats for Prime Video designed to make it easier for viewers to connect with brands. Shoppable carousel ads allow customers to browse and shop multiple related products on Amazon during ad breaks. Interactive pause ads show a translucent ad featuring brand messaging and imagery when a user pauses a show or movie. Interactive brand trivia ads feature factoids about a brand while giving customers the opportunity to shop on Amazon and even unlock rewards.

8 ELEMENTS OF A GOOD CTA BUTTON TO MAXIMIZE CONVERSION

CTA button copy should complete the sentence “I want to (blank)”. Use an action-packed verb like ‘sign up', ‘register', or ‘download' to replace the blank. Adding a subheading underneath the CTA can also act as an extra nudge. Use drop-shadows to make a CTA easily identifiable as a clickable element. If a CTA is placed above-the-fold, ensure it aligns with the reading pattern. However, don't always stick to placing CTAs there, as below-the-fold may work better for complex offers. It's important to test. Don't place unrelated content, ads, or social media buttons near a CTA.

2 TACTICS THAT HELPED A SAAS COMPANY SCALE TO $700K ARR IN 4 MONTHS

Two targeted, high-conversion GTM tactics allowed a SaaS brand to grow to $700k ARR in just 4 months. The brand created a custom, personalized landing page for each account and individual when conducting cold outreach on LinkedIn. The team also attended in-person conferences that they knew their ICP would attend and prepared personalized ABM decks in advance based on the exhibitor list.

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HOW TO USE CHATGPT TO CREATE AN EMAIL SEQUENCE

This article walks through how an email marketer uses ChatGPT to build an email sequence. First, she uses a prompt to create an outline of key topics, value-adds, and CTAs to focus on in each step of the sequence, along with recommendations for time delays between emails. Then, she has ChatGPT provide potential email copy to use as a base. Lastly, she manually writes and infuses her brand voice into the copy to reflect human empathy when finalizing the email sequence.

USING OPENAI BATCH API TO CLUSTER SEO KEYWORDS AND CUT COSTS BY 50%

OpenAI offers a Batch API that allows users to send grouped requests at half the usual cost. This feature is particularly useful for tasks that can wait up to 24 hours, for example, clustering SEO keywords, product feed copy optimization, or large document summarization. This article includes a simple step-by-step guide to using the Batch API for large-scale SEO tasks.

META ANNOUNCES NEW AI-POWERED ADVERTISER TOOLS TO BOOST PERFORMANCE WITH CREATORS AND REELS

Meta has announced several new features designed to help advertisers drive performance. The platform now offers personalized machine learning-powered creator recommendations in Instagram's Creator Marketplace designed to reduce the time spent sourcing creators for Partnership Ads. Advertisers can now use multi-destination product ads on Facebook Reels, which allow users to swipe through multiple products at once. Reminder ads on Instagram now support external links, designed to help convert a user's interest into a purchase.

A COMMON HOMEPAGE MESSAGING MISTAKE: USING SALES MESSAGING

Many businesses mistakenly expect their homepage to perform like a top salesperson. They translate functional value into business value for prospects. ClickUp, a productivity platform, stands out by prioritizing believable functional benefits on their homepage, allowing prospects to envision the practice benefits without needing a sales pitch. A homepage has limited time (15 seconds) and reach. Leave the detailed value discussions to sales calls and tailor your homepage with believable benefits.

TRANSACTIONAL EMAILS: WHAT THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY'RE NOT

A guide to what transactional emails are and are not, and the related compliance requirements. Transactional emails include order or shipping confirmations, order refund notifications, password resets, or customer service replies. Triggered emails, which are not transactional emails, include order renewal reminders, back-in-stock notifications, abandoned cart emails, and birthday/anniversary notifications. Transactional emails do not need an unsubscribe link. For customers in the U.S., no more than 20% of a transactional email should be promotional messaging.

20 LESSONS FROM 20 DIFFERENT PATHS TO PRODUCT-MARKET FIT

A round-up of learnings that cover fine-tuning your ICP, nailing product messaging, and more.

FREE & PAID RESOURCES FOR A SOLOPRENEUR

This contains a list of tools an entrepreneur used for their business, categorized by marketing, branding, stock images, analytics, copywriting, and more.