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50 POWERFUL WORDS & PHRASES

50 words to enhance web copy or CTAs categorized into verbs, urgency, and exclusivity.

X/TWITTER USE IS DOWN BY NEARLY A QUARTER SINCE THE MUSK ERA STARTED

According to new data, X's number of daily active mobile app users in the U.S. has fallen by 23 percent since November 2022. In the last 12 months, the user count went down 18 percent. The most abrupt decline in usage seems to have occurred around the time the platform introduced rate limiting and rebranded from “Twitter" to "X."

STEP ASIDE, INFLUENCERS — WE’RE NOW IN THE ERA OF DE-INFLUENCING

The rise of de-influencing marks a shift away from traditional influencer culture. De-influencers encourage people to buy less stuff and instead use what they already have. 75% of people are more likely to change their behavior in a direction that is good for the environment after watching social media content. 83% of people think TikTok and Instagram are good platforms to get advice about how to live sustainably.

4 ETHICAL WAYS TO USE SCARCITY IN YOUR EMAILS

Scarcity tactics work best when they’re genuine and transparent. Use a specific number to prove your claim when promoting a best-seller that’s legitimately low in stock and close to running out. Release a limited-edition product where only a certain number of units are made. Send a back-in-stock email when you replenish the inventory of a best-seller. Phase out seasonal products or collections by sending a last-call email.

B2B GROWTH, IRL: HOW TO DO EVENT MARKETING THAT ACTUALLY MAKES A DIFFERENCE

The best event marketing opportunities for driving growth are field marketing events, which can be tied to a specific sales metric, such as sales-qualified opportunities (SQOs). Prioritize events that allow you to connect with your ICP and enable direct lead generation via sponsorships. Look for guerrilla marketing opportunities, such as side events or unique handouts beside the conference entrance. Speaking at a conference is usually the most effective way to get your ICP’s attention.

BOOSTED POSTS VS. ADS: TIPS FOR FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, AND LINKEDIN

Boosted posts serve as a convenient entry point into advertising, offering straightforward promotion of organic content with minimal effort. On the other hand, social ads deliver extensive customization features and precise targeting capabilities, allowing marketers to fine-tune their campaigns for maximum impact. This article shares tips on when to use each to maximize marketing effectiveness.

LINKEDIN IS EXPERIMENTING WITH A TIKTOK-LIKE VIDEO FEED IN ITS APP

LinkedIn is testing a new short-form video feed. The dedicated feed is designed to boost engagement and discovery on the platform by presenting bite-sized videos that people can quickly scroll through. Its content is focused on careers and professionalism. The feed may be monetized in the future to entice creators to post.

GOOGLE RELEASES NEW PERSONALIZED SHOPPING TOOLS

Google is aiming to provide tailored shopping experiences catering to the unique needs and tastes of its users. Personalized shopping tools now include style recommendations, brand preferences, AI image generation, and virtual try-on features. These tools allow individuals to refine their searches based on personal preferences, rate styles, and visual products in real-life scenarios before making a purchase.

HOW BEYOND MEAT USES BUYER PSYCHOLOGY

Beyond Meat is valued at over $455 million. Its marketing is a lesson in how to effectively position and categorize a product. The brand used the Bandwagon Effect in its advertising by positioning meatless alternatives as a social norm, rather than a niche product. Beyond Meat strategically placed its products in the meat section of the grocery store — not hidden away in the health foods section. The company also tapped into the growing consumer consciousness about the environment by framing its product as a more ethical alternative to regular burgers.

6 SEO EXPERIMENTS THAT HELP REVEAL HOW GOOGLE WORKS

This article describes the results of 6 different SEO experiments. Disavowing all external links to three blog pages showed that links still do matter for Google rankings. Added a related posts section to improve internal linking produced positive results across multiple URLs. Blocking Google from crawling pages using robots.txt results in decreased performance, but it can be recovered.

WHY YOUR BRAND NEEDS AN INTEGRATED MARKETING STRATEGY

According to a recent study, 62% of buyers feel like they are getting mixed messages from companies. This leads to a dilution of brands and reduces the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. To prevent this, adopt an integrated marketing strategy where all campaigns across channels have the same tone and the same message. This article shares best practices and examples of successful integrated campaigns from Volkswagen, Waze, Wells Fargo, and more.

AMAZON WILL HAVE TO PUBLISH AN ADS LIBRARY IN THE EU AFTER ALL

Amazon will have to provide information about the ads running on its platform in a publicly accessible online archive following a decision by the European Union this week.

GOOGLE MAPS GOING ALL-IN ON LISTS FOR RECOMMENDATIONS

Google Maps is prioritizing curated lists from its community and third-party sources such as The New York Times, OpenTable, and The Infatuation.

NEUROSCIENTIST REVEALS PERFECT AMOUNT OF TIME TO SPEND ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

People’s well-being improved when social media use was limited to 30 minutes a day.

SOCIAL MEDIA NOW UNLAWFUL FOR KIDS UNDER 14 IN FLORIDA

Florida's new law mandates that children under 14 can't have social media accounts. Those aged 14 to 15 require parental consent. Accounts on TikTok may be deleted if the platform’s algorithm determines that a user’s preferred content indicates they are 13 or younger. On Snapchat, if a child under 15 can’t obtain consent, the platform will restrict their account to strictly emails and group chats until they turn 16.

FACEBOOK SNOOPED ON USERS’ SNAPCHAT TRAFFIC IN SECRET PROJECT, DOCUMENTS REVEAL

Facebook’s secret “Project Ghostbusters” project involved intercepting and decrypting Snapchat users’ network traffic to gain insights. It’s important to note the ethical implications surrounding data collection and prioritize transparency. The project underscores the lengths major tech companies go to outperform the competition.

HOW REMOVING CONTENT INCREASED CONVERSIONS BY 36%

8 SEO WRITING BEST PRACTICES

This post contains a list of SEO content best practices, categorized by internal linking, meta descriptions, user experience, and more. The recommendations include structuring content with hierarchical headers, adding one relevant internal link per 200 words, and ensuring image alt text is descriptive and includes appropriate keywords.

A FRAMEWORK TO REACHING YOUR FIRST $10K MRR

The most important ingredients to reach your first $10k MRR include unlocking your first growth channel, understanding your customers deeply, and focusing on what matters. Cast a wide net on growth channels to identify the right one and hone in on your ideal audience segment. Make an attempt to speak to every customer personally to uncover friction moments and ‘aha’ moments. Focus your resources and attention on the next month — it’s a waste of time to build for the 10,000th customer mark when you haven’t reached the 100th customer mark.

13 EMAIL MARKETING KPIS TO TRACK FOR ENGAGEMENT & LIST GROWTH

Every dollar spent on email marketing can generate an average return of $36. This article defines 13 KPIs that help maximize the value of your brand’s emails. These include click-to-conversion rate, list growth rate, and subscriber value.

LINKEDIN ROLLS OUT COMPANY PAGE MESSAGING TO ALL BRANDS

Pages Messaging is a feature that organizations can activate on LinkedIn to enable users to communicate directly with their Pages. You can configure different conversation topics that your LinkedIn Page is open to receiving, including demo requests, customer support, or career inquiries. The feature offers integrations with Bird CRM, Brandwatch, Hootsuite, Oktopost, Sprinklr, and Zoho.

ADOBE LAUNCHES GENERATIVE AI MARKETING TOOL, GENSTUDIO

Adobe's GenStudio is focused on helping social, paid media, and lifecycle marketers who want to create social media posts, email campaigns, and display ads. Enterprises that already use services like Workfront or Journey Analytics can connect them to GenStudio.

WHY MARKETERS NEED TO EMBRACE THE FUNNY WHEN IT COMES TO PODCASTING

86% of listeners turn to comedic relief via podcasts to boost their spirits, creating an opportunity to engage with audiences authentically and resonate emotionally. Some examples of brands that have successfully embraced the strategy are Airbnb and The Economist. This opinion piece advises marketers to tune into the wit of professional comedians and to create ads that audiences will enjoy.

AD BUDGETS FOR GAMES ARE GROWING FOR 40% OF MARKETERS

As gaming's popularity surges, with over 200 million gamers in the US alone, 40% of marketers are planning to increase their ad budgets for games. The focus on gaming advertising is fueled by the expanding audience beyond younger generations and the perception of in-game advertising as brand-safe.

SORA: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

OpenAI released 7 new short films produced by creatives worldwide that show Sora's flexibility in visualizing concepts and ability to bring surreal narratives to life.

CANVA ACQUIRES AFFINITY TO FILL THE ADOBE-SIZED HOLES IN ITS DESIGN SUITE

Canva's acquisition of the Affinity creative software suite fills crucial gaps in its design suite with Affinity's Designer, Photo, and Publisher applications and marks a strategic move to challenge Adobe's dominance in the digital design industry.

16 INCREDIBLY USEFUL THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW GOOGLE SHEETS COULD DO

Explore 16 Google Sheets keyboard shortcuts and formulas that allow you to grab data from the web (ie. ImportHTML), import recent entries from a website’s RSS feed (ie. ImportFeed), eliminate extra spaces (ie. Trim), enforce email addresses (ie. IsEmail), and more.

GOOGLE EXPANDING AI-POWERED SGE TO SOME USERS THAT DIDN’T SIGN UP

Google’s AI-powered SGE, initially available through manual opt-in, has now started appearing for users who haven’t signed up. The company is currently testing this feature on a small percentage of search traffic in the US, including users not logged into Google accounts. It’s aiming to gather more feedback before potential wider implementation.

SMALL BUSINESSES WORRY ABOUT LOSING A VITAL MARKETING CHANNEL IF TIKTOK IS BANNED

Small businesses are worried about losing a vital marketing channel if TikTok faces a ban. Bigger brands appear less concerned, but some have started planning alternative promotional strategies. Marketing agencies are advising clients to diversify their influencer spending across platforms like Instagram and YouTube.

HOW SALUD USES QUIZZES TO INCREASE SALES & CONVERSION RATE

Salud, a vitamin drink brand, leverages quizzes to capture valuable zero-party data and personalize its product recommendations and marketing efforts. The quizzes are designed to be concise and visually appealing to maintain a high completion rate. The quiz results page shows optimized product recommendations and also kicks off personalized post-quiz email flows. The first-party data from these quizzes enables the brand to produce highly targeted marketing campaigns, personalized product recommendations, and tailored content.

HOW TO MASTER A CLOSING CALL AND CLOSE LEADS INTO SALES

Closing calls represent the culmination of a potentially long sales process. Strategic communication and techniques play a vital role in securing commitments from prospects during these calls. This article shares best practices, such as following a structured approach, addressing objections, and building rapport, for confidently guiding prospects towards making purchasing decisions.

NEW GA4 & GOOGLE ADS TRACKING UPDATES

Google recently announced new changes to streamline conversion data between GA4 and Google Ads. Conversion tracking between these tools never exactly matched, and the new updates don’t fully solve this problem. “Conversions” in GA4 are being renamed to “Key Events”. If you have a Google Ads account linked to GA4, you’ll see “Conversions” synced between the two platforms.

LINKEDIN INTRODUCES DYNAMIC UTMS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEB TRAFFIC THROUGH LINKEDIN ADS

LinkedIn’s new dynamic UTMs allow marketers to include custom tracking elements in their ad campaign URLs. For each campaign, marketers can add a dynamic UTM parameter that will automatically be added to the destination URL alongside the account, campaign, and/or creative name. Dynamic UTMs will be available globally by the end of this month.

HOW I ADJUST MY BUSINESS AND PRICES FOR INFLATION

This article shares a robust system to help small businesses adapt to inflation. Before increasing prices, delve into detailed financial analyses and use tools like QuickBooks to identify inefficiencies and cut unprofitable products and processes. Strategic price adjustments, particularly on ancillary services, help offset rising expenses while maintaining the integrity of the core product line. If a price increase is still a must, communicate transparently with customers about changes to ensure loyalty and understanding.

WHY ARE SO MANY B2B FIRMS SPONSORING THE OLYMPICS?

B2B brands’ motivations for large-event sponsorship are the same as consumer brands — emotional resonance, broader audience reach, fast awareness, and reputation growth. B2B brands are seeing the need for brand-building and experimentation with cultural spaces. Leveraging platforms like connected TV and live sports allows B2B companies to locate new and often younger customers in a digital world.

TIP FOR HIRING B2B CONTENT MARKETERS

When interviewing for content marketers, ask candidates to dissect a piece of content you admire - this will reveal how well they see details, what their strengths are, and how effectively they can explain themselves.

META’S MOVE AWAY FROM POLITICAL CONTENT MAKES SENSE

Meta is prioritizing entertainment-based content and offering users the option to opt-in for political posts.

7-STEP MARKETING POST-MORTEM

This post outlines how to do a retrospective for yourself as a marketer to gain self-insight without self-blame.

BING DEEP SEARCH IS OFFICIALLY LIVE FOR ALL USERS

DEEPFAKES ARE SPREADING, PUTTING CREATOR AND BRAND SAFETY AT RISK

AI-generated deepfakes are now a reality. There are some state-level laws regulating and limiting deepfakes, but legislation doesn’t often move at the same pace as technology. One way for brands to navigate the ethical complexities of deepfake technology is to declare and disclose all AI content. Without clear labeling, brands, creators, and celebrities alike risk losing audience trust.

A GUIDE TO THE WEDGE MARKETING STRATEGY

Implementing a wedge marketing strategy involves capturing a specific niche (or wedge) first and then expanding gradually. This guide covers how the strategy works, its impact on vertical vs. horizontal products, and tips on managing multiple audiences as you scale. An example of a wedge strategy is how Toast started with booking and reservations software for restaurants before expanding to a complete POS for restaurants and beyond.

7 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR UNSUBSCRIBE RATE FOR INCREASED RETENTION AND ENGAGEMENT

The general rule of thumb is to keep unsub rates for email under 1% and SMS under 0.5%. High unsub rates could be due to improper segmentation, repetitive offerings, high send frequencies, or poor design. Ensure customer journeys are integrated, know which channels to message a certain customer in and not be too noisy in the others, implement automated flows, and clean lists on a monthly cadence.

WHAT IS SENTIMENT ANALYSIS MARKETING? TIPS, TOOLS, AND TECHNIQUES

Sentiment analysis marketing involves analyzing text to discern whether the tone is positive, negative, or neutral. It helps to understand customer perceptions about the brand or product. Techniques like brand monitoring, campaign insights, and social listening empower marketers to glean insights from customer feedback across various platforms. By analyzing and tracking sentiment, marketers can enhance customer experience, refine products, manage brand reputation, and make data-driven decisions.

SPROUT SOCIAL LAUNCHES NEW MENTORSHIP NETWORK FOR MARKETERS

Sprout Social has announced the launch of a new mentorship program for social media and marketing professionals via its virtual community platform, The Arboretum. The program will match participants with a mentor or mentee based on their networking goals and shared interests for one-on-one mentorship. The Arboretum also offers educational opportunities, access to exclusive events, and daily peer discussions. The platform is open to all marketers at no cost.

INSTAGRAM UPDATES HASHTAG SEARCH TO BROADEN DISCOVERY

When you tap on a hashtag in Instagram, you’ll now see the full search results for that topic as you would see in explore. By providing access to these additional elements, Instagram is aiming to improve profile discovery, as opposed to only highlighting content. The new feature will ideally expand user search behaviors by linking them through to the various elements. It could also put more emphasis on ensuring that your target keywords are included in your profile in order to maximize discovery in the Accounts display.

10 STEPS FOR A GREAT REFERRAL PROGRAM

This article walks through 10 essential steps for crafting a successful referral program. Key steps include choosing the right incentives, incentivizing both referrers and referees, and utilizing tiered rewards for enhanced engagement. The article also shares insights on how to measure incremental impact, combat fraud, and implement a continuous testing process to ensure ongoing program success.

SGE RESEARCH STUDY: THE IMPACT OF GOOGLE SEARCH GENERATIVE EXPERIENCE ON BRAND AND PRODUCT TERMS

A new analysis suggests websites should expect some erosion of traffic from brand-related terms as a result of Google’s Search Generative Experience. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and competitors to rank for your brand and product terms. 91.4% of all keywords analyzed had an SGE result, which means virtually all brands and websites will be impacted by this. The study contains additional findings related to links used within SGE results, the impact on PPC results, and more.

SHRINKFLATION: DRAWBACKS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, CONSUMER TRUST

Shrinkflation requires brands to assess their long-term brand implications and environmental impacts. While reducing product size may seem to decrease packaging waste, it can lead to increased packaging material per unit, contributing to environmental issues. If shrinking products is necessary, consider an eco-design approach — removing unnecessary packaging and reducing packaging weight. Implementing models like reuse or refill systems are also better than traditional single-use systems.

LOOKING FOR GEN Z SHOPPERS? THEY’RE ON FACEBOOK

Facebook is the new Craiglist for young shoppers because of the familiarity of the social platform and its perceived trustworthiness - Gen Z shoppers also love buying secondhand as it's cost-effective, sustainable, and something they value.