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Challenger brands On and Hoka grew fast by offering new designs. These upstarts succeed by appealing to niche audiences, using social media to amplify their brands, and disrupting traditional product categories with innovations. For major players to stay competitive, they need to prioritize consumer-driven innovation, embrace more flexible marketing strategies, and target emerging opportunities and niches.
GoFundMe's response to the LA fires included a video campaign highlighting Walt, an Altadena resident, which raised $882K after 20M views. By partnering with Kalina from Make Big Talk, the team quickly verified and shared fundraisers, using storytelling to turn personal loss into widespread support. With 30K daily social mentions, GoFundMe is able to amplify the visibility and impact of LA campaigns while strengthening its own brand.
Nivea India set a Guinness World Record with 444 consecutive videos of people passing and applying moisturizer in its annual campaign.
Duolingo posted a cheeky post on X in response to TikTok users migrating to RedNote, another Chinese app.
Interactive demos are dynamic, lightweight, and available in formats like stitched screenshots with tooltips or HTML - unlike static videos, which can slow down your site.
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News organizations anticipate a decline in search referrals as social platforms deprioritize news and AI-generated summaries become standard in search. News has long been a trusted space for advertising, dating back to the rise of newspapers and TV. Despite concerns about traffic, publishers are investing in AI and focusing on social video platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram to adapt.
AI branding dominated this year's CES, often masking a lack of meaningful innovation. Many products repackaged existing features as AI, from “smart” remotes to laptops with basic chat-based settings. Smart glasses and AI PCs promised more but delivered limited practical applications. Amid the AI hype, genuine hardware advancements stood out, including Samsung's cutting-edge display technology and improved laptops with better battery life.
WHOOP found its niche in the wearable market by targeting elite athletes with data-driven insights on recovery, strain, and sleep. Its growth strategy includes partnerships with top athletes, a content-driven media presence, and a subscription-based model that prioritizes analytics over hardware. By positioning itself as a data-first company, WHOOP created a sticky product that thrives on community and performance-focused innovation.
BabyBillion grew its YouTube channel to 1.5B monthly views in a year by leveraging YouTube analytics to refine videos, focusing on metrics like CTR and audience retention. It created 40-50 sec shorts teaching values like sharing through rhymes and stories, using a structured approach that included music selection, lyrics, sound design, and storyboarding. Weekly data reviews guided content decisions. The team also nurtured young talent, focusing on genuine emotional expression in performances, which significantly improved kids' acting and overall skills.
RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, surged to No. 1 on Apple's US App Store as TikTok users get ready for a potential US ban. With 300 million monthly users, RedNote combines Pinterest-like layouts and Instagram-style content, emphasizing short-form videos for beauty tutorials and shopping.
Notepad Online is a free browser-based tool for creating and storing notes. It offers plain text, rich text, and markdown editors and autosaves notes locally within your browser. It ensures privacy with no data shared or synced across devices.
Autodesk's success began with AutoCAD, a cost-effective CAD program for engineers and architects that was priced at a fraction of its competitors. By addressing a specific audience's needs, Autodesk grew into a $5B revenue company with a $60B market cap. Narrowing focus enhances expertise, uncovers opportunities, and strengthens messaging. In contrast, companies that try to serve everyone often fail to stand out and grow.
US consumer sentiment remains low despite economic strength. Spending exceeds pre-pandemic levels, driven by a "value now" mindset, where consumers focus on immediate value. They're splurging on experiences like dining while cutting back on low-value items like cars. Middle and low-income groups are under financial pressure, but their spending increases as they select purchases that offer both good value and quality within their budgets.
New marketing mix modeling solutions use Bayesian techniques. They offer granular insights across campaigns and geographies and adapt to changing business contexts with time-varying models. Designed for speed and transparency, they enable quick data preparation, automation, and real-time insights through AI.
18 social ads from companies like Ruggable, Levi's, and Dove.
The homepage of Rows.com is a spreadsheet with a full in-app tutorial of its product.
SEO strategies fail due to weak authors, an isolated-channel approach, and a lack of automation.
Fashion and beauty products will lead social commerce this year, followed by home goods, electronics, and health and wellness. 53% of consumers are likely to purchase products recommended by influencers, trusting those with expertise, real-life usage, and non-sponsored posts. YouTube ranks highest for product research, while Facebook leads in purchases.
The broad definition and public perception of “artificial intelligence” make it hard to distinguish genuine AI from marketing claims, leading to "AI washing." True AI involves machine learning and deep learning, but many companies adopt AI tools without clear strategies, fearing obsolescence. While AI excels in pattern recognition and data processing, creativity and originality remain uniquely human.
The Supreme Court heard arguments on a law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. operations by January 19 or face a ban. TikTok argued the law violates First Amendment rights and that divestiture is unfeasible due to China's control over the algorithm. The DOJ cited ByteDance's ties to the Chinese government as a national security risk. The Justices focused on the balance between free speech, national security, and the feasibility of divestiture without Chinese regulations.
Wikipedia's “Maybe Later” button on its donation popup helped raise $169M last year by asking for users' emails and sending reminders. This leverages the “consistency effect,” where users are more likely to convert after mentally committing to considering the offer.
To quickly refine your ICP, identify top customers based on renewal, product usage, and satisfaction. Use AI to analyze shared traits like industry, size, and business model, then validate findings with other data. Interview customers fitting these traits to uncover their priorities, pain points, and triggers for using your product. Conduct targeted surveys to gather deeper insights on messaging, channels, and differentiation.
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The ICE Framework helps prioritize growth ideas by scoring them on impact, confidence, and ease, each rated from 0-10. Scores are multiplied to rank ideas, allowing data-driven decisions and efficient resource allocation. It isn't suited for long-term planning or complex projects. The framework can overlook high-impact ideas if they're difficult to execute, so adjustments may be needed.
Look for crawl instances from Perplexitybot (Perplexity) and GPTBot (OpenAI) in your log files to determine if AI search engines are discovering your content.
Pricing is an iterative process that should adapt to market shifts. Surveys and focus groups can misrepresent true willingness to pay due to unaccounted friction. Effective pricing requires testing multiple price points, isolating pricing changes, and measuring conversion, retention, and expansion rates. Price sensitivity tests and segmenting new users during testing yield cleaner insights.
54% of AI products are adopting new models like usage-based and skill-based pricing. OpenAI's ChatGPT Pro at $200/month sets a high benchmark, while companies like Cognition and 11x focus on charging for tasks or outputs instead of seats. This shift reflects customer demand for simpler, value-driven models that focus on higher skill levels over traditional flat fees.
Younger consumers are prioritizing moderation, conscious well-being, and unique experiences.
Baby boomers are more likely to react negatively to hyper-targeted ads compared to younger generations.
Create product launch checklists that incentivize critical thinking over box-checking.
Squid Game season 2 success, with 68 million views in just three days, was driven by Netflix's extensive experiential marketing, which included events across 25 countries and six continents. Highlights included the Paris "Red Light, Green Light" game, a 4.56K run in Los Angeles, and "Squid Game: The Experience" in NYC, all designed to immerse fans in the show's dystopian world. The campaign's global reach and interactive elements reignited audience excitement and established a new standard for entertainment marketing.
Shackleton's recruitment ad highlights the power of clarity and focus in marketing. Modern marketing struggles with soaring costs and ineffective targeting, as 85% of marketers lack the information to reach their audience effectively. The Trigger Technique transforms customer stories into actionable insights, helping marketers identify "trigger events" that prompt purchases. Interviews with recent best-fit buyers uncover their needs, pains, and motivations, which are used to design targeted campaigns that resonate. By running hyper-targeted experiments and collaborating with teams, marketers can craft compelling offers and achieve significant growth with minimal resources.
Misdirection Marketing uses intentional mistakes to boost engagement and generate buzz. On social media, it drives comments; in emails, it improves open and read rates; and in traditional media, it can create earned media coverage. Examples include typos in email subject lines, "leaked" promotional emails, and playful errors in social posts. Successful campaigns include Virgin Voyages' Black Friday email stunt, Lululemon's "We Made Too Much" sale rebranding, and Hostess' sports-themed social media mix-up. While effective for engagement, overuse risks damaging a brand's reputation, so this tactic is best reserved for occasional, well-executed campaigns.
Break away from strict brand guidelines and shift from teaching to facilitating collaboration. Prioritize community engagement by actively responding to feedback and involving audiences. Diversify content formats like carousels, newsletters, and Threads to avoid video fatigue. Replace generic strategies with personalized approaches, relying on intuition for creative decisions. Focus on immersive, non-sales content and seek inspiration from a variety of sources to stay ahead of trends.
EJ White from beehiiv will be sharing tactics on how to optimize signup forms for better conversions, create viral loops, and build effective referral programs during a webinar that takes place on January 14 at 12 PM ET.
LinkedIn has over 1 billion users, but fewer than 100,000 active newsletters, which creates a somewhat low-competition channel. Built-in tools help distribute content through email, notifications, and the newsfeed, allowing marketers to maximize visibility and engagement without starting from zero. Strategies such as publishing content directly from personal profiles or company pages, maintaining optimal frequency (weekly to monthly for profiles, more frequently for company pages), and using LinkedIn's profile features and cross-platform promotions can help grow the subscriber list and enhance brand visibility.
CXL's "Content Strategy for Demand Generation" focuses on leveraging AI and tracking results. Girls in Marketing's "Empower Your Brand" focuses on personal branding, employee-generated content, and showcasing unique experiences. Its "Leverage Your Company LinkedIn" highlighted LinkedIn trends, short-form videos, and creating impactful content. CIM's "LinkedIn Advertising" provides strategies for campaign optimization and audience segmentation.
Experienced reviewers are consistently more critical when rating high-quality products, with 98% of these products receiving lower scores than expected based on the average reviewer. A study analyzing millions of ratings found this bias results from stricter standards among knowledgeable users, distorting average scores. When analyzing customer reviews, it is important to adjust for reviewer strictness to create more accurate evaluations.
Madhav Bhandari, CMO of Storylane, shares his marketing journey with Ahrefs' Tim Soulo in a podcast exploring early-stage marketing, CEO-CMO relationships, and scaling SaaS companies. They discuss building successful brands without formal frameworks, leveraging demo-led SEO to 10x traffic, and Bhandari's playbook for scaling SaaS businesses. The conversation covers trust-building, employee advocacy, rebranding, and the best channels for early-stage founders.
Exaggerated marketing claims, like "Full Self Driving" or "100% Satisfaction Guaranteed", can harm customer trust, create bad experiences, and lead to skepticism about all the other brand claims.
Dynamic pricing in response to fluctuations in demand, competitors, and seasonality can increase profits and improve customer experiences.
20 creative emails by ElliottDigital.
Ipsos, in collaboration with TikTok, explored the new era of commerce to shed light on how platforms like TikTok are fundamentally altering the way consumers interact with brands and make purchasing decisions. 3 in 4 shoppers on TikTok agree that the app is the go-to place to discover new brands and products – replacing the role that traditional search engines have played. The app's “interest graph” allows brands to reach audiences that extend beyond their core persona or target market, opening doors to previously untapped demographics to drive sales. In fact, TikTok outpaces other core media and e-commerce platforms when it comes to purchase consideration metrics.
Shelly Palmer's CES 2025 keynote described a technological upheaval redefining marketing, creativity, and human agency. He explained that businesses now market to AI-driven personas, not individuals. Traditional ad IDs and link-based search are becoming obsolete. He described the generative AI era as a turning point in history, raising questions about authorship, energy use, and the future of AI.
Starting with 5% activation and 1% free-to-paid conversion rates, Navattic improved these metrics to 33% and 5%, respectively, through user-focused onboarding changes. They simplified the sign-up process, added step-by-step guidance, and introduced pre-built templates to showcase examples. In-app banners and contextual upgrade prompts highlighted the value of paid features without disrupting user workflows.
Nneka Mosley breaks down long-term design projects into multi-part social media content to grow her DIY brand. This encourages repeat engagement and builds suspense. She repurposes footage for formats like before-and-after videos and maintains a posting schedule of 3 times per week to balance growth and workload. Tools like Splice, CapCut, and a content calendar streamline production. Investing in a manager and videographer enhances content quality and partnerships.