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Brand architecture plays a big role in gaining a competitive edge. There are 4 major approaches to structuring brands: house of brands, endorsed brands, sub-brands, and branded house. This article explains how each strategy is different and shares examples from companies like Volkswagen and Unilever. It showcases how these companies strategically aligned their brand portfolio to improve customer appeal and market position.
Properly establishing null and alternative hypotheses before conducting A/B tests is essential. The null hypothesis suggests sample observations occur randomly, while alternative hypotheses propose that the control and variant groups are not comparable. This article shares best practices and discusses in detail the different types of alternative hypotheses and how to use them to interpret results based on statistical significance.
This article explores the concept of familiarity bias and its impact on brand perception and decision-making, highlighting its role in shaping consumer behavior.
X users are still experiencing having their accounts flagged with a “temporary label” and facing restrictions without understanding why.
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Microsoft is injecting pop-up ads into Google Chrome to push users to switch to Bing, a move reminiscent of previous malware-like notifications. Despite assurances of choice, Windows users are frustrated with Microsoft's aggressive promotion tactics. There is currently no easy way to opt out permanently.
AI-enabled marketing today accounts for nearly 45% of all advertising globally. By 2032, AI will influence 90% of all ad revenue. Agencies are facing pressure to adapt or risk irrelevance. This is leading a shift towards value-based pricing models, where costs are determined by the value of services provided to the advertiser.
This post describes 5 creative ways to generate buzz on April Fools' Day this year. April Fools brings creative freedom for marketers that other holidays don’t. Some brands have launched fake physical products, such as Google’s “smart” tulip or Duolingo’s in-person push notifications. Launching an impossible feature can also generate buzz, such as Tinder’s “height verification tool.” Making an intentional “mistake” is also an option, for example, Warner Bros' “leak” of its Detective Pikachu film on YouTube.
This guide walks through how to define your B2B blog strategy and 7 steps for implementing it. The strategy should clearly define who the target audience is, whether it's for generating leads or traffic, if it will be SEO-focused, and how the content will be produced. When implementing the strategy, determine a posting frequency that prioritizes quality over quantity. The strategy should also guide which sources to generate content ideas and whether you want to optimize existing content instead of creating something new.
With how quickly things are changing in tech, marketing playbooks are quickly becoming relics. This article covers an alternative: the RINse and Repeat framework. The first critical step is building a rich understanding of your customers and market with a narrow-to-broad-to-narrow approach. Next, generate novel ideas for campaigns that capture attention in new ways, including new channels you haven’t tried yet. Lastly, narrate the impact and avoid over-indexing on conversion metrics that often under or overstate campaign success.
The Getty, a renowned art museum in LA, has made nearly 88,000 art images available for free download under Creative Commons Zero, allowing users to copy, modify, distribute, and use the works for commercial purposes without permission.
LinkedIn is aiming to spark conversations and deepen relationships through gaming, following a trend of non-gaming platforms incorporating games for increased traffic. Its early efforts include games called Queens, Inference, and Crossclimb. Puzzle-based casual games have been one of the most popular categories in the space among mobile users.
The purpose of a homepage is to drive potential customers to take action, but oftentimes the page is less clear than it should be. The four most common reasons for unclear homepage messaging are speaking to multiple audiences at once, choosing the wrong sales champion, sharing multi-order benefits, and using vision messaging. This article walks through how to build an effective homepage, covering how to choose your audience, position your product, and uncover your key value propositions.
Tangential SEO explores keywords beyond your core business, broadening your audience reach and offering unique content opportunities. It offers benefits like press coverage, expanded brand awareness, and reduced content fatigue. Brands are likely to face less fierce competition for tangential keywords. To uncover tangential keywords, use techniques such as mind mapping, leverage AI tools, and mine insights from platforms like Reddit.
Major brands such as McDonald’s are investing in anime to build goodwill among its diverse and growing Gen Z audience.
Testing is crucial, but dividing your audience for A/B tests or creating numerous campaigns can impact results. Stay proactive and manage expectations to avoid discarding the winning alternative due to lower performance in tests.
Reddit revealed new free-form ads that mirror user posts, aiming to bolster engagement and advertiser interest ahead of its IPO. The new format will offer flexibility in content creation and quick information delivery inspired by popular megathreads. While advertisers may benefit from enhanced engagement, users might perceive ads blending with regular content as intrusive.
90% of ad buyers are shifting personalization tactics as a result of increased privacy legislation and signal loss, with ad budgets increasingly allocated to channels that leverage first-party data, such as CTV, retail media, and social media. One challenge marketers are likely to face as they focus more on first-party data is a lack of interoperability between these channels, which makes it harder to assess effectiveness.
The endowment effect is when people irrationally overvalue things once they have a sense of ownership over them. Potential customers will value your product more if you can give them the feeling that they own it. Free trials and test drives make customers feel this way even though they haven’t bought anything. A money-back guarantee allows people to truly own something with minimal risk. Giveaways make the customer used to the paid experience. Using “you” or “your” in copywriting subtly makes the reader feel more ownership.
This interview with marketers from a renowned copywriting agency discusses strategies for crafting compelling social media captions. The interviewees stress the significance of authenticity, clarity, and relatability in engaging audiences and building brand credibility. Brands can create more impactful and memorable content by focusing on genuine communication and avoiding overly sales-oriented or artificial language.
Yahoo is testing a new creator program that will allow certain writers to publish and monetize stories under the Yahoo News brand. The draw to creators is the chance to expand their audience bases while earning ad and affiliate revenue. 21 creators have been invited to join the platform’s beta test. Yahoo plans to expand its creator network into the hundreds over the next couple of months.
Creator Search Insights, a new analytics element on TikTok, gives creators insight into topics people are searching for on TikTok. Creators can see which topics are most popular based on a popularity score or the Recommended Topic label next to the search term. TikTok is also building “search value” into its Creator Rewards Program calculations, enabling creators to increase their payouts by uploading videos that align with search trends.
The three most common problems with value propositions are failing to make it clear what the product or service does, forgetting to mention valuable benefits, and neglecting to tell your prospect what will happen if they buy. Always use plain and clear language to describe value propositions, particularly for complex products or services. Ensure that all elements of value are listed on websites so visitors understand the full benefits. Make the post-sale experience clear so users know what to expect - this can be achieved with a future-pacing flowchart.
Both-ism is a cultural phenomenon where contradictory elements coexist harmoniously, influencing trends in commerce, technology, and social dynamics. Some examples include omni-commerce fusing digital and brick-and-mortar, 'worcation' or 'bleisure', and alcohol-free spirits for mocktails. Brands can offer innovative solutions and offer novel experiences by embracing both sides of a dichotomy.
This piece contains budgeting hacks and budget management tips from a CMO’s perspective. Always budget for holdbacks and headcount holdbacks, but do not name it a “slush fund” or “extra headcount” as finance teams may eliminate them. Plan for a “grab bag” for great ideas that aren’t in the budget but that could be activated quickly if budget becomes available. This post also includes a template for what a summary budget page should cover — plan, actuals, forecast, left to spend, YoY increases, and more.
The key to engagement is to prioritize your consumers’ experiences and reward their contributions, leaving them wanting to engage with your brand time and time again.
45 headline templates for writing hooks for blog posts, carousel titles, FB ads, and landing page openers.
Amazon's ad system charged a seller almost $300,000 for ads targeting California, where they couldn't sell their products due to state regulations, despite them flagging the issue to the company.
The House passed a bill requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face having it banned on US devices. The bill received bipartisan backing with a 352-65 vote. Proponents argue the measure is vital for national security, while opponents contend it violates free speech rights and could harm businesses. The bill’s fate in the Senate remains uncertain.
LinkedIn is expanding its Thought Leader ads by enabling businesses to promote content from any user in the app, not just their own employees. To help prevent content from being promoted without consent, creators will receive a notification asking them to approve or deny requests to promote their posts.
Ferplast, an online pet supply store, found through research and analysis that visitors were failing to find what they wanted and almost 90% of them never reached a product page. The brand tested a full-width navigation menu against the control hamburger menu, resulting in a 32% increase in sales. This worked because the new navigation gave users a clear forward path and exposed the breadth and depth of the brand’s product range.
Animations can elevate story-telling in sales decks, emails, and landing pages. Figma uses product hero animations to convey its product value and differentiation faster. Mutiny enhances its case study page with subtle movement upon hover. Mailchimp uses animation to create micro-interactions with users’ product experiences (eg. an animated high-five after users send emails).
Psych energy is your customers' emotional response as they go through your funnel. It is measured from 0 to 100 and it increases or decreases based on customer interactions. The Psych Energy Framework is useful for determining if you are providing enough positive value to your potential customers before asking something from them. For example, share demos and case studies before asking for personal data to increase the chances of conversion.
Seja automates testimonial and case study collection. It allows users to customize testimonial collection forms in seconds, automate invites and follow-ups, and turn testimonials into shareable images and videos. A freemium version is available.
Maximizing the potential of your Instagram bio is crucial for driving conversions, sales, and web traffic. This article recommends utilizing a link in bio tool, regularly updating your links, and aligning your link strategy with your marketing objectives. It provides insights from several industry experts based on how they successfully use the bio field for their brands.
Copy.ai rapidly scaled from 0 to 10 million users in four years by leveraging AI technology. To grow so fast, it launched an MVP within weeks, utilized only 7 software tools for development, and adopted a 'prosumer' model with an early monetization scheme starting at $3 per month. It also leveraged AI to accelerate product development and distribution.
Cognitive Load Theory explains why people forget key information and make suboptimal choices when overloaded with sensory information. Brands can mitigate this by breaking down choice architecture into chunks, for example, organizing a huge product catalog into understandable categories. It also helps to simplify complex systems, just as WeightWatchers did by distilling weight loss into a points system. Use imagery with product specifications to help users understand specific product features more easily.
Just because most of your traffic comes from Google, doesn’t mean you should spend most of your digital marketing effort on Google. Social media, productivity, news, and e-commerce sites all have a larger share of total web visits than search engines, which means that search isn’t the most significant opportunity for capturing new users. Instead, invest in the sources of influence to which your audience pays attention, such as social accounts they follow, podcasts they listen to, or specific websites they visit.
A curated list of SEO newsletters ranging from beginner to expert.
TikTok's growth rate stagnated in Q4 2023, particularly in the U.S., suggesting a shift in user behavior as many young users, who initially flocked to the app, are now entering adulthood and finding less time for extensive usage.
95% of US teens have access to a smartphone. Three-quarters of them say they feel more peaceful when they’re without them. Yet, most teens do not limit their phone or social media usage. They believe smartphones facilitate creativity, hobbies, and academic success — which outweighs perceived harms.
Brands are pushing the envelope to hire splashy AI leadership roles and prove to the market that they’re serious about AI. Within the next year, new roles on the rise will include ethicists, conversational marketing specialists with expertise in sophisticated chatbots, and data-informed strategists on the brand side.
This post contains 8 ways to improve your emails and make them world-class. These include using sender names with a personal touch, 7-word subject lines, and images to avoid color distortion. You should also A/B test all of the major elements in your emails to validate what works best with your own audience.
Marketers are in a hurry to bring results, which makes it difficult to zoom out to the strategic foundations. This post contains a prioritization framework with 4 layers: product, strategy, systems, and surface-level actions. Each layer is dependent on the last, which forces you to start from the foundations and work outwards to the surface-level tactics. This ensures that the executed marketing tactics align with the foundational product and strategy.
Meta has announced new ads updates that primarily focus on retailers and those using its automated Advantage+ campaigns. Advantage+ creative optimizations can now automatically optimize video ads for viewing on Reels and dynamically create ad variations in order to personalize them to each user. The platform also offers new dynamic formats, including Reminder ads on Instagram, improved promo code ads, and ads with product tags.
TikTok is reportedly developing a new photo-sharing app amidst potential US ban concerns. TikTok Photos is supposed to be a brand-new app focused solely on sharing photos, diverging from TikTok's short-form video format. Strings within the TikTok app for Android suggest that it aims to connect users who enjoy photo posts and will allow syncing between the two platforms. No official launch date has been announced.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Ozempic both offer the illusion of progress, addictive simplicity, and vanity. NPS can tell you how many promoters or detractors you have, but often fails to reveal why customers feel that way. Instead of NPS, brands should invest in measuring Customer Effort Score (CES) and Net Dollar Retention Rate (NDR). It’s also worthwhile to ensure that feedback mechanisms include rigorous and random sampling methods, as well as qualitative feedback.
Chamberlain Coffee, founded by influencer Emma Chamberlain, is evolving beyond its Gen Z base. It is maturing and expanding into new products like flavored matcha and ready-to-drink canned coffee, aiming to appeal to a broader demographic. The brand is venturing into retail spaces like Amazon, Walmart, and Whole Foods while strategically adjusting its brand tone and packaging for broader demographic appeal.
Today’s decision-makers skew younger and more female, with 45% under the age of 35 and over half being women. B2B brands like Cisco are leveraging live music festivals, such as BottleRock Napa Valley, to engage with more diverse audiences. Beyond captivating fans with its technology story, Cisco nurtured business relationships in its onsite suite, hosted clients and prospects, and partook in festival activations. Its story underscores the importance of emotional connections and in-person interactions at such live events for B2B brand engagement.