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- The Weekly Sharpener #76
👋 Hey fam!
This Wednesday round-up is filled to the brim with amazing marketing resources and value.
Before we dive in, it's almost the beginning of summer so make sure while you're trying to crush your goals you take a little time you enjoy yourselves, you've earned it!
Dan Pantelo (CEO of Marpipe) and I dig into the current state of creative and marketing technology surrounding creativity on Add Creative. We debate the trends that we are both seeing across hundreds of clients who are advertising across nine figures of spend.
If you're thinking about creative or how it will affect your business into the future, you should check it out.
We'll also break down 4 key pillars that will help your business worth through the growth challenges of the current market conditions.
With some counter-intuitive thinking on content, you can use for your next set of ads.
We are grateful for a space in your inbox and your he. 🙏
Cheers,
Chase
P.S. - if you're interested in advertising on connected TV, respond to this email, I have a special treat for you.
🎙Add Creative
A sneak peek from Episode 9 👀
Better creative is in many ways an answer to iOS 14, right? Cause in a world where. You can't launch shitty creative and let the audience go do all of the work for you to find the few people who are gonna react well to it. You know, you, you're only targeting broad audiences today.
And so you have to have broadly appealing creative. How are you gonna do that? Well, there are tools like Pencil and Marpipe and a bunch of other like of our peers in this space that are emerging tech partners that help people tackle this problem. So like right now, I think what you're seeing to answer your question, more definitively, right?
At this permanent moment, what you're seeing is this fusion between creative teams and performance marketing, which used to be separate teams. Sit on separate floors, have separate slack channels. Now the best creatives are the ones who look at marketing data. Creatives never used to look at marketing data before that's a big new change.
The best performance marketers are the ones who understand the design and creative process. That never used to be the case.
If you enjoy the episode, please rate us 5⭐️'s & share!
Content that matters 🐐
Growth is what’s expected of us. Growth is why this industry started and still exists. Creativity for growth is the superpower of the creative leaders and visionaries at this festival and of all the talent in this room. Growth creates value that leads to economic good, which in turn, enables doing greater good for society and for the planet. Why does the creative industry matter? Because there is tremendous value from creativity as a force for growth and a force for good.”
1. Defend your share of voice
The data also shows that those brands that cut their share of voice (SOV) during a recession end up spending more during the recovery to get back both SOV and market share.
2. Take advantage of the opportunity
Brands that recognize this as a special moment to gain SOV during an economic downturn costs less. The “International Journal of Research in Marketing” refers to this as “proactive marketing.” The same budget you had before the downturn gets you higher SOV as your competitors cut back.
3. Balance your media and messaging portfolio
Think about shifting your message to account for the very real human experiences that we are facing: higher gas prices, higher food prices, making decisions about what’s considered a necessity. Re-engineer your value proposition to fit the needs of the moment.
4. What about supply chain issues?
There are great case studies of brands that seized the opportunity to build brand awareness, pent-up demand, and share of voice while it was inexpensive to do so. Shift your messaging to remind your customers why they love the brand as much as they do. Be useful and helpful. You can still create a value exchange even though you can’t get them the product at the moment.
Why it matters: Tailwinds come and go, just as headwinds do, however when you are in them, it feels like it's going to go on forever.
But what to do? Slash your budget? Then less volume coming in? Focus on retention and upsells? What about your supply chain.
We believe the 4 pillars above can quickly equip you to think more deeply about how you can move forward, make sure your budgets are delivering value and you're able to not only sustain but grow during this time.
Thread of the Week 🧵
You've heard of "social proof", right?
Humans look to others for guidance when we make decisions
But have you heard of "social doubt"?
— Katelyn Bourgoin ⚡️ (@KateBour)
Jun 24, 2022
What is the opposite of social proof? -> social doubt.
This feels counter-intuitive, right? Why would you bring this up? There are two reasons why this matters most 👇
This is blue ocean aka untapped market share. Imagine taking your negative reviews and using them to market?
a) It will catch customers off guard and make them engage.
b) Your competitors aren't doing this so you will own the space and ensure you are more memorable.
2. You are using objection handling as an offensive effort.
a) It will show that you are addressing a problem or know that you DON'T do something,
b) You are leaning into the fact that you only serve a certain group of customers.
Why it matters: in a world of homogenized ad angles and branding, how can you stand out and have a meaningful impact on your prospective customers, while making sure you deliver value?
Social doubt is a way you can be proactive, while others are reactionary, and be top of mind for prospects whenever they become an active buyer.
What we are working on here is CONVERSION + AD RECALL.
Expert Strategy + Learnings
Some amazing learnings from thought leaders in DTC.
Carl's CRO Tips 🙌
Use strategic product images to boost your product page conversion rate:
Highlight the real benefits
Show our product in use by your target audience
Use social proof
For more 🔥 follow Carl Weische from Accelerated.
Rahul's Paid Media Learnings 🤘
Creative testing can benefit your business in many different ways. It provides a blueprint for future creative strategies and can pay off financially as well.
By analyzing the competition, testing variations, and ideating concepts, you can develop creative that allows you to stand out, minimizes financial risk, and improves return on ad spend.
Here’s how I look at creative testing for our clients:
When you are looking at iterations of a winning creative try and not limit yourself to just changing the hook. Look at other elements such as:
Show creative with price vs without price
Audio - Background music sound change or a new voiceover
Switching product placement
Changing colours in the first 3 seconds
Adding captions vs not adding captions
Speeding up content by 1.1x or cutting our areas where the watch time is lower
Testing the above can help increase both the shelf life of your assets as well as performance.
For more 🎯's follow Rahul Issar.
Worth Your Time 💡
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