- The Weekly Sharpener
- Posts
- The Weekly Sharpener #94
The Weekly Sharpener #94
Is your brand part of the culture? If not, 😬...
Chase Mohseni
September 25th, 2022
👋 Hey fam!
I'm really excited to share this 🤘 Sunday roundup with you!
This week we dig into organic content with the content team at Air! Ariel Rubin (Director of Communications) & Francis Zierer (Content Marketing Manager) chop it up on Master Mind - giving their learnings about building brand equity that turns into revenue.
What we all realize as we talk is how imperative it is for every brand to be a part of the cultural discussion in some form or fashion and the cost of cutting in the opposite direction.
We also break down just how simple it can be to get started with building content that can deliver huge dividends for your business, both in internal momentum for your team and also consumer equity as they vet your brand during the consideration phase.
We also dive into the YouTube Shorts creator monetization announcement and what that might mean in the future for the ads game.
Then dig into a few common mistakes made on the majority of landing pages out there. As you get ready for BFCM or just, you know, running your business 😛. I will call this out again later but the ceiling you are putting on your ads performance is predicated on the landing experience you give the prospects you're trying to close.
Knowing that...does it make you want to dive in and tinker?
As you can see, there is important stuff for you to read in here, so keep scrolling. Excited for you to grow!
Cheers,
Chase
Pencil - Creative AI
Making ads is a grind. 🥵 Figuring out what works is the same.
What if you could scale your creative testing on paid ads by automating the creative production process?
All you need are your assets, branding, and performance data and you could have new ad ideas. No more thinking about what to run, you have ads served up on a silver platter!
(15% off your first year with code: TDS15) 🎉
Partner with us 🤝
Marketing agencies, freelance creatives, e-comm experts…want access to our generous revenue share and co-marketing opportunities? Become a Pencil Partner today! You can learn more here.
🎙Add Creative
Apple Podcast 🍎 II Spotify 🎧
A sneak peek from Episode 21 👀
How can you not, when you look at a platform like TikTok, we're on TikTok, do we need, is it driving sales?
No. Do, is it important to be on the world's fastest-growing social media platform of all time? Fuck. Yeah, it'd be it's insane to. And what does it cost us? Very, very little. Actually, we also, I mean, we, we hired a, a young woman in college to run the account because she understands it better than me. I'm 37 years old.
I have no business being on that platform. It's a young person's platform. I think being part of culture is so important. And to France's point about these companies in the Zeit guys, like Graza or fly by J. That's what we need to try to do. How do you get into the zeitgeist? Super hard, super hard.
Easy-ish if you're like a cool brand, like Graza really hard when you're some weird SaaS company called pencil or air, like that's hard. That's hard to be in the zeitgeist when we're us. And I think we have to work harder. It's just a, it just compels us to actually work harder and find more creative ways.
Find more interesting opportunities, find ideas to play with merch, uh, other partners, you know, dig into podcast, whatever, like there are a million ways to do it. You just have to, it's not about throwing more money necessarily. It's just about
being more creative.
If you enjoy the episode, please rate us 5⭐️'s & share!
Content That Matters 🐐
Why it matters: Get ready for a huge investment coming here from creators (also TikTok starting this as well)
What I think this will do to the marketplace is have a whole host of creators investing their time in YouTube shorts because of massive monetization opportunities. 🤑
Prediction, because of the content being snackable (heard this in a meeting over a year ago and have been saving it for just the right time.)
That means something possibly massive for your ads. Shorter ad units will matter more than ever.
You will say that this is part of what has ethos at IG/FB/TT already. That's true, however, SO brands also put out 75-second ads as well.
If the content is meant to be "Shorts" the ad units will need to follow that ethos as well.
That will put pressure on teams:
to tell better stories in shorter increments times
have better + more dynamic compositions in their assets
This might lead to (uh oh) ads that aren't so DR-focused but focused on a quick interest piquing snippet to drive click-through and the birth of micro thumb stop rate.
A lot remains to be understood after this announcement but I'll be posting this again when all of this comes to pass...or I'll be editing this section like I'm Marty McFly (if you don't get that reference, I'll be very sad!)
Either way, get ready to evolve the way your create to extract the most value from the channel!
Thread of the Week 🧵
possible (uh oh) ads that aren't able to be as DR focused, and the birth of micro thumb stop rate. Can you get someone to stop for 1 sec instead of 3.
I roasted 200+ websites in the last 48 hours.
80% were losing sales from the same problems.
Fix these 3 basic issues and 3x your sales/leads/signups:
— Kenny Smithnanic 🙌 (@kennysmithnanic)
12:55 PM • Sep 19, 2022
Why it matters: I cannot stress this enough at any time of year but especially going into the heavy season, getting your customer experience right.
Ad -> Landing Page -> Checkout -> Lifecycle (email/SMS)
We talk about the ads in here often, what Kenny breaks down are some quick ways you can get your landing experiences dialed in so that you can deliver a better experience where they are able to able to easily understand what problem you're solving.
Here is the TLDR for the 3 easy fixes Kenny suggests:
1. Add credible social proof: So ppl believe your headline claims 2. Make your site the default homepage on your mobile browser to fix formatting issues 3. Have an outcome-focused headline above the fold
#1 is my favorite because it matters for every single online business on the planet. Here is his fix.
Weak headlines (aka headline aches) 75% of the businesses I roasted had headline problems. The most common: - Purefuly functional (ie We are a chatbot for businesses) - Too vague (ie Connect everything. Achieve anything) Luckily, it’s easy to fix. Watch:
Original: We are a chatbot for businesses Better: Build a chatbot in 15 minutes that saves you 15 hours/week. Original: Connect everything. Achieve anything Better: Spreadsheet/database hybrid to organize your work, your way.
Now go and change your headlines right now! If you want any help or some feedback, send them our way!
Expert Strategy + Learnings
Some amazing learnings from thought leaders in DTC.
Carl's CRO Tips 🙌
Create the urgency for a customer to act.
If you do not get people to act quickly, they'll bounce from the page and you'll never see them again. (This is the majority of visitors)
Use this copy:
"Do XYZ now!"
"Limited stock available"
"Today"
For more 🔥 follow Carl Weische from Accelerated.
Rahul's Paid Media Learnings 🤘
Creative Insight: Before and After Ads - Show the experience of what a customer used to look like before and after using your product. In some cases we’ve noticed using days instead of before and after has worked better. E.g. before vs 90 days after using {brand}
Follow Rahul here 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 content we love and think is ultra-valuable!
Getting Your Brand Ready for Black Friday Cyber Monday 2022 has been a challenging, volatile year. But Q4 is always a time for optimism. We've put together a checklist to make sure you don't leave anything on the table. kulinco.com
From our Library 📚
Join the ✏️ community
Sign up to learn and meet 100+ other great founders & operators across DTC.
Curious about what we're building? 🧱
Check out our roadmap and upvote what you think is important! If we have missed anything, you can add your suggestions as well.
YouTube Channel 📺
Check out our library of amazing video content.
Fav Newsie's
Eli's Newsletter: CX & Retention Learnings
Enjoy this issue? 🤌
Share The Weekly Sharpener with another marketer on your team.