TLDR MARKETING 2024-05-21

MARKETING BUDGETS ARE DOWN 15% YOY

Marketing budgets aren't what they used to be. They're down 15% from 2023 to 2024 on average in the US and Europe. Search advertising represented the largest mean percentage of digital channel budgets, followed by social, digital display, and SEO. As for offline channel budgets, event marketing had the highest mean percentage, followed by sponsorships and linear TV. Over 75% of CMOs say that Gen AI is an investment priority for this year and expect it to eliminate costly drudge work and solve productivity challenges due to shrinking budgets.

HOW SELL-SIDE CURATION IS RESHAPING THE POST-COOKIE SUPPLY CHAIN

The phasing out of third-party cookies is driving the adoption of sell-side curation, where supply-side platforms use first-party data to create targeted audience segments for advertisers. This development is transforming the ad tech landscape by reducing demand-side platforms' dominance in audience curation and increasing the strategic importance of supply-side platforms and data management platforms.

5 TACTICS FOR BETTER ONBOARDING

The initial onboarding experience for users is frequently overlooked as a one-time checklist. This often becomes stale as products, messaging, and GTM tactics evolve. To reduce friction and accelerate time-to-value, set up reverse trials directly into the highest-tier plan, use social proof throughout the onboarding flow, push for team usage, and create action-triggered onboarding emails.

HOW TO SELL LIKE APPLE: THE OUTRAGEOUS POWER OF A MINIATURE STORY

We don't notice we're being sold to when we read a good sales story. We pay attention to the story, and that's what makes a product seem more valuable. This author breaks down an effective sales story that Apple published on the sales page for the iPhone 13 Pro. The opening sentence arouses curiosity and promises readers they'll learn something. The story then effectively combines technical language and a description of Hollywood cinematographers to sell readers on a more creative life — which in effect sells the product.

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TOME: MAKE DEALS, NOT DECKS

Tome is an AI-powered research and presentation platform for sales and marketing teams. It can be used for sales pitches, landing pages, and sales enablement. The paid plans include AI-generated presentations created with a prompt, which provides an outline and 4 variations of each page. The free plan provides access to static deck templates.

60+ SOCIAL MEDIA INSIGHTS

This report includes 60+ charts of interesting findings on how 1,900+ marketers are currently using social media. It covers all of the major social platforms, organic and paid activities, video marketing, and more. A few stats include FB (86%) and IG (79%) being the top 2 platforms used by marketers, visual content being the top content type (87%), and a significant 44% of marketers having no plans to increase their TikTok organic activities over the next 12 months.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRODUCT VS. BRAND DIFFERENTIATION

The trouble with product differentiation is that every unique ingredient or feature will be copied. However, a truly authentic and consistent brand identity cannot be copied. This allows brands like Liquid Death to succeed, despite selling a commodity. Companies should invest in brand differentiation by establishing their category and also what they're selling. If you must have product differentiation, do it in multiple ways to make it more defensible.

THE 4 LEVELS OF MARKETING SOPHISTICATION

This piece highlights a case study from Kraft's Cheese & Dairy unit, illustrating how it crafted a category growth strategy across diverse brands. It identifies 4 levels of marketing sophistication: marketing as a cost center, brand building and pricing power, product and business model innovation, and driving marketing capitalization. Price-slashing Philadelphia would've wrecked the cheese's premium status. Cost-cutting on Velveeta would've been a massive opportunity cost. Each Kraft brand required tailored strategies based on their market positions and consumer dynamics.

WHAT'S BEHIND THE WEIRD FLAVORS POPPING UP ON STORE SHELVES

Limited-time, often quirky flavors from food companies attract attention on social media and appeal to adventurous Gen Z consumers.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR TESTIMONIALS IMPACTFUL

6 questions to ask your customers for non-generic social proof.

PROFIT-FIRST CONTENT FRAMEWORK

A bottom-up content strategy for SaaS companies with smaller budgets.