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- The Weekly Sharpener #101
The Weekly Sharpener #101
You're overthinking your ads strategy 🥸
👋 Hey fam!
I'm really excited to share this 👊 Tuesday roundup with you!
This week on Master Mind we get a POV on what a top agency is doing to get their customers ready for BFCM and beyond with Phil Kiel (MD @ Hello Earth).
He shares what is working for him and his clients in paid media currently and what you can apply easily to your business.
Cherene Aubert (Head of Growth @ Bobbie) shares her 3 favorite growth levers that no one discusses in a guest essay and it's 🤌 - believe, one of them will surprise you.
Enjoy and hope you're thriving!
Cheers,
Chase
Pencil - Creative AI
Making ads is a grind. 🥵 Figuring out what works is the same.
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Apple Podcast 🍎 II Spotify 🎧
A sneak peek from Episode 26 👀
You've gotta start by defining what your objective is, and that objective has gotta be really personal to both you, as you know, like the founder, the MD of the brand, whatever, whatever your job title is.
Um, And personal to the brand, and you can't, you, even though it's very easy to, you know, absorb a lot of content online about what other brands are doing for Black Friday, what they did last year, competitors, you know, affinity brands, you've, you've gotta try and ignore that.
You know, take some learnings into what works, but then ignore that and run your own race because other brands might be discounted by like 40%, but that's because they've got stock or objectives from their investors. Whereas you might not have stock issues, you might not have, you know, the investors breathing down the back of your neck.
So like, run your own race and, and don't try and catch up, you know, run the race that someone else is running because they, they'll be in a different position to you.
If you enjoy the episode, please rate us 5⭐️'s & share!
Guest Content 🐐❤️...that matters
From Cherene Aubert (follow her)
I spent the last 7 months of my career slowing growth during an industry supply crisis. I peeled back every growth lever and learned secrets untold.
My assumptions about what was driving growth were shattered. With confidence, these are the 3 most impactful drivers of growth:
Your Offer The single most impactful growth lever in your tool belt. When polled, growth marketers may name channels like “paid” or “email” as their biggest growth drivers. But those are just vehicles to the offer. The right offer can 2X CR and reduce CAC by 4X. (Validated 🤑)
So how do you create the right offer? Understand how customers make purchasing decisions in your category.
Do a profit analysis on a lower AOV first-order offer. It’s a different answer for each brand. But simply: what easily gets your customer into first order?
2. Your Experience The next biggest driver of growth is building an experience your customers love.
Too many make the mistake of basing strategic decisions on “what will drive the most sales today” instead of “what will produce the best experience ongoing”
So many think retention = email/sms. No. Retention has to be built into your business model to work.
Tactically, design a seamless experience that funnels from first order to repeat purchase. Learn what the natural 2nd and 3rd orders are and make these as easy as possible.
Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos have been quoted countless times re: customer obsession and experience.
It’s a cliche because it’s true Prioritizing customer experience over revenue results in…more revenue. Build an organic loyalty and referral flywheel without the SaaS Finally.
3. Press Why aren’t more growth marketers talking about press as a part of their strategy?
The growth I’ve seen through national media hits is bigger than what you can get with paid media, plus it builds the brand. Press is hard to earn and takes time/resources, but it works.
The Kardashians, Trump, and others built their entire brands off of the press. It definitely becomes more relevant as your brand hits a higher growth maturity, but it’s a mistake to ignore this as a channel if you’re looking for sustained, long-term growth and brand awareness.
That’s it. The channels tactics and platform tweaks and reporting tools are all important, but if you’re looking for big swings, it’s these 3 drivers that produce the maximum impact:
Your offer
2. Your experience
3. Press
Why it matters: We are unabashedly obsessed with paid ads. There is nothing wrong with it. At Pencil, we believe in paid ads completely.
However, just like your diet, you need a well-balanced stack when it comes to your marketing. Now, just as your palette has evolved from childhood, so will the way you want to deploy market spend.
What this breakdown shows you is how a company who is scaling massively, has taken some core tenets of all brands: Offer + Experience and poured gasoline on them after they feel like they got them right with:
PRESS.
That ugly immeasurable beast. But press has something that paid social very rarely has, and can be baked in if you do it right, virality.
Having that word-of-mouth coefficient built into your marketing stack allows for your paid media to perform better and your LTV to go up as a consequence. This is the holy grail.
It's never to early to start think about not just how you diversify, but why you diversify. Now you might not be ready for press, but you are ready (and hopefully already doing) to have an amazing offer + experience.
(BUT ALSO TEST ADS 🤪
Expert Strategy + Learnings
Some amazing learnings from thought leaders in DTC.
Carl's CRO Tips 🙌
One of the secret levers that brands use to control your attention 👇
Size Does Matter And Catches Attention. Use It Wisely. How to use it:
Use your headlines for big ideas - Make buttons have high-contrast colors - Make buttons big + easy to click
For more 🔥 follow Carl Weische from Accelerated.
Rahul's Paid Media Learnings 🤘
In October we tested 100+ ad concepts, here is one of the best-performing 👇
Creative Style to test: Would you rather?
✅ Compare your product vs your competitors in a would you rather concept
✅ Great way to show your benefits and compare yourself directly to your competitor. It’s one of the perfect ways to show your customer that you are the clear win.
Follow Rahul from Reach Digital for more 🧠
Creative Cuts ⚔️ - ICYMI
Want to learn about WHY the creative you love works and how you can leverage it 👇
Worth Your Time 💡
No explanation, just amazing content.
We're about to ruffle some feathers today:
Your ecomm store probably shouldn't run Black Friday or Cyber Monday promos.
Let us explain 🧵👇
— Northbeam (@northbeam)
Nov 3, 2022
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Eli's Newsletter: CX & Retention Learnings
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