In the dynamic realm of AI, crafting effective prompts is pivotal for success. Matt Wolfe, an AI reporter and analyst, stresses the importance of specificity and goal-oriented prompts. For instance, transforming a generic request into a refined prompt involves defining clear intentions, considering context and persona, and envisioning the desired output. A concrete illustration of this approach involves upgrading a generic prompt for a blog post into a detailed, AI-ready masterpiece.
Developing an AI workflow
Once mastered, AI prompts open the door to a transformative workflow. A day in the life of an AI-enabled marketer involves leveraging AI at various stages, from summarizing performance metrics and generating email subject lines to organizing customer feedback and developing blog post titles. The integration of AI-driven audience segmentation and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques can lead to significant improvements, as demonstrated by a 38% lift in click-through rates achieved through AI-personalized email campaigns.
Testing AI tools
HubSpot’s AI Marketing Report reveals a notable increase in the adoption of AI and automation among marketers. Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot’s CTO, emphasizes the rapid evolution of AI and encourages marketers to test its capabilities. With breakthroughs like web-browsing capabilities in ChatGPT, marketers are advised to explore a variety of AI tools tailored to their specific challenges. Matt Wolfe recommends tools like Conveyor for chatbot latency reduction and image generation tools like Leonardo and Kaiber for creative assets.
AI integration across marketing workflows
AI has proven to be a valuable contributor across marketing workflows, exemplified by HubSpot’s AI-powered content assistant streamlining creative processes. Ramon Berrios from DTC Pod integrates AI extensively in marketing tasks, showcasing its versatility in newsletter production, podcast automation, social media management, and content creation. However, it’s crucial to note that AI should complement, not replace, human creativity, as high-quality and engaging content remains the cornerstone of marketing success.
Identifying AI-generated content
As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, marketers must discern between quality and spam. Key indicators include the content’s originality, insightfulness, and alignment with the brand’s voice. The article stresses the enduring importance of high-quality content, emphasizing that engaging and captivating material will always prevail. As AI evolves, marketers will need to identify tasks best suited for AI while maintaining a human touch in areas requiring creativity and authenticity.
Ensuring brand safety
With the integration of AI, brand safety becomes paramount. Transparent communication and the ethical use of AI are essential to preventing unintended consequences. Privacy concerns are addressed by HubSpot through clear terms and conditions for data import. Marketers are urged to be cautious about data security and aligning AI usage with brand values. Transparent communication within the organization is crucial when using multiple AI platforms with distinct models.
Integrating AI intentionally
While AI presents significant opportunities, there are inherent risks that marketers must navigate cautiously. The article outlines five AI no-go’s, including gathering data without consent, having unrealistic expectations, using AI tools with unclean data, neglecting source verification, and ignoring ethical considerations. The emphasis is on specificity, purpose, and ethical data use, as these principles are foundational to HubSpot’s AI strategy.
The human touch in AI
Despite AI’s advancements, it remains a work in progress, subject to biases and limitations. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of humanity in marketing. Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot, emphasizes the need for a real point of view in marketing, rooted in belief and humanity. The key to winning with AI is strategic, intentional, and vigilant use, amplifying human potential rather than overshadowing it.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI marketing, these seven must-know tips from HubSpot’s AIMS team provide a comprehensive guide to navigating the complexities, ensuring marketers make the most of AI while upholding brand values and delivering meaningful experiences
Disclaimer. The information provided is not trading advice. Cryptopolitan.com holds no liability for any investments made based on the information provided on this page. We strongly recommend independent research and/or consultation with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.
Derrick is a freelance writer with an interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency. He works mostly on crypto projects’ problems and solutions, offering a market outlook for investments. He applies his analytical talents to theses.
If you think hiring experts is expensive, try hiring novices
I talk to entrepreneurs all the time with a shiny new product or service and big marketing plans. Since I own a marketing agency, they’re probably not expecting to hear what I have to tell them:
They don’t need my agency yet.
In fact, they might not even need a full-time marketer on their team yet. At this stage, with a go-to-market plan the priority, there are certainly lots of boxes to check, but many of them have little to do with media.
Let’s discuss how to approach marketing resources at the go-to-market stage: mistakes to avoid, priorities to address and how to move forward without curtailing future growth prospects.
Marketing mistakes in the go-to-market stage
There are a couple of things founders can get very wrong about marketing at this stage: either they under-invest in things like branding and proving product-market fit, or they over-invest in resources they don’t need.
I’ve seen plenty of founders bring on full-time CMOs or VPs of Marketing when the priorities should be block-and-tackle work and establishing product-market fit and a go-to-market plan. A better approach, and one that doesn’t represent a long-term salary commitment and/or equity shares, is a fractional expert who can help you develop your go-to-market strategy and find the right operational talent – which might be freelance – to carry it out.
Another mistake founders make at this stage is thinking that any marketer can do the job and not trying to find – or pay for – a great fit. I had a conversation with a fellow agency founder the other day, and what he said about hiring – in general, but especially in the early days – really stuck with me: If you think hiring experts is expensive, try hiring novices.
You need to tackle a few initiatives at this point:
1. Establish your brand
By “branding,” I don’t mean spending a bunch of money on commercials and programmatic campaigns to build brand awareness. I’m talking about building the essentials: a name, logo, visual identity and messaging that speaks to the brand’s positioning, differentiation and target market. This branding should carry over into optimizing owned media: a website, social media profiles and profiles on any free directories that might be referenced by your target audience.
2. Find a channel-product fit
The quickest way to assess the right advertising channels for your offering is to choose one or two advertising channels (usually Google and Facebook) and methodically test messaging, creatives, and audiences to see what features and differentiators resonate and with whom. You’re likely convinced you have a great product that can improve your ICP’s life, but paid media offers a quick way to establish proof of concept outside of your echo chamber.
Even with paid media on the table, you’re probably still too early for an agency; if you go that route, you’ll get a B team and a retainer you don’t need. When you scale up, it’s time to evaluate in-housing or hiring an agency. In the meantime, I highly recommend freelancers or consultants with expertise in these channels. If you try to do it yourself or make it worthwhile with existing resources who don’t have the chops, you’ll never know if it was the channel that didn’t work or just a lack of operational skill that led to failure. Carefully vetted freelancers are great for point-and-shoot projects, and this is an imperative one.
3. Build a community of evangelists
Your immediate network should help provide you with a seed group of folks who can test your product and speak publicly about why they’re using it. Those folks will provide some significant early benefits: social proof and a source of referrals to establish a revenue base and force you to build your customer service processes.
How to plan for responsible growth
The important things to avoid at this point have a theme: commitments that will extend beyond their usefulness. This often boils down to hiring and equity, but it can also incorporate initiatives like PR and media campaigns that don’t have a product-market fit to convey.
Concentrate on initiatives that will pay off for years to come: positioning, audience understanding, competitive research and your place in the market. Look for experts who can help you tackle each of these, but leave yourself room to bring on the next wave of experts as your business matures and your needs evolve.
When you move into the next phase of your business – early-stage growth – you’ll have more resources on hand and a broader range of possible initiatives to tackle, including building an actual marketing team. I’ll break down the challenges and considerations of this stage in my next post.
CEO of Playbook Media and GrowTal. Bryan Karas is a career marketer, having spent nearly two decades helping businesses of all sizes scale their marketing efforts. Bryan founded Playbook Media in 2017 to help entrepreneurs to navigate the many pitfalls of growth marketing.
In the new fourth edition of my book, “Email Marketing Rules,” I include quotes from scores of experts who have impacted how I think about the email channel, as well as about marketing in general. Here, I’d like to share six of my favorite quotes along with the wisdom I see in them. In no particular order, here they are …
However, I would argue that these laws have actually protected businesses and the email channel. The truth is the law always lags consumer expectations, as well as the expectations of inbox providers in the case of anti-spam laws. And a growing gap in expectations is a growing risk to businesses in terms of customer loyalty and brand image and reputation.
This danger is most evident in the US, where the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is still sadly in effect. In this country, merely complying with CAN-SPAM would be disastrous, leading to block listings and wholesale junking and blocking of campaigns by inbox providers. As Laura says, our subscribers expect much more from us. At a minimum, they expect us to respect their permission, both in terms of opt-ins and in terms of responding to their inactivity by eventually suppressing future emails to them.
Quality Customers and Quality Emails
“Customer loyalty is mostly about choosing the right customers.”
Where you acquire new subscribers almost predetermines whether your email program will struggle or thrive. If you acquire many of your subscribers through list purchases, poorly done list rentals, sweepstakes and other sources that are far from your business operations, then you’ll be plagued by high bounce rates, low engagement and high spam complaints.
On the other hand, if you’re gaining the vast majority of your subscribers via signups during your online or in-store checkout processes, on your website and in your app, then you will have added lots of customers to your list who are genuine fans that are predisposed to engage with your emails and buy again.
If you’re unsure how your audience acquisition sources are affecting your overall email program health, then start tagging your sources so you can track the behaviours of the subscribers that come onto your list from each one. Chances are you’ll find that one or two of your acquisition sources are responsible for the majority of your bounces, inactivity and complaints.
Too many email marketers still believe that the key to getting more conversions is to get more opens. After all, a subscriber can’t convert if they don’t open the email, they reason.
In the pursuit of high open rates, these marketers often use vague and cryptic subject lines and preview text — often defending their use as being “clever” or in service of creating a “curiosity gap.” However, these open-bait tactics only succeed in attracting curious subscribers rather than ones who are actually interested in the email’s call-to-action. Not only does this result in low click-to-open rates, but open rates eventually decline over time as subscribers end up repeatedly feeling like their time was wasted reading messages they ended up having little interest in.
In these cases, the marketer has sacrificed subscriber trust in exchange for getting additional opens that rarely drove business goals. The wiser path is to respect your subscribers’ time by using envelope content that reflects the content of the email. Long-term, this results in higher total opens, as well as more conversions and less list churn as your openers will have stronger intent.
While John was talking about campaign engagement when he said this, his sentiment can also easily be applied to marketers’ habit of pushing their way into channels that consumers prefer to use for communicating with family and friends rather than focusing on the channels like email where consumers most want to hear from brands.
Marketers: Manage Your Audiences
“The customers are the assets; not the store and not the ecommerce sites.”
Marketers too often get confused about what they’re supposed to be managing. Often, they think they should be managing product inventories. In particular, email marketers often think they should be managing email campaigns.
As Michael points out, the truth is that marketers should be managing their audiences. I certainly understand that business demands routinely drive the goals of email and other digital marketing campaigns, but the overarching focus should be on serving your audience. If you do that well — sending relevant campaigns at the right time and right cadence — then you’ll likely find that you’re also meeting your business goals.
Trim That Bloated Email Content
“When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.”
Everybody wants a piece of email marketing, so marketers often find themselves fending off requests from their co-workers in merchandising, operations and beyond. (It’s because of those persistent merchandisers that so many marketers think their job is managing inventory levels.) If unshielded from that, email marketers often feel pressured to include an excessive amount of content in the messages they craft, with that clutter undermining overall performance.
Given the trend toward shorter, more focused emails with fewer calls-to-action, as well as the trend toward AI-driven content, it’s more important than ever to have a curated and clear content hierarchy to guide your time-starved subscribers to the actions you most want them to take. When it comes to email content, more usually isn’t better.
Make That Next Email Better
“The strength and power of anything — whether it is a business, an individual fitness plan, or event — has its foundation in an accumulation of small, incremental improvements that all either fit together or build on each other. To sum it up: small improvement x consistency = substance.”
One of my favourite things about email marketing is that it’s a channel that’s built for iteration. It doesn’t matter so much if your last campaign wasn’t perfect, or if you made this mistake or that mistake, because chances are that you’re sending another campaign in two or three days, if not sooner. And every send is an opportunity to get a little better.
I’ve tried to bring this spirit of iteration to “Email Marketing Rules.” With each new edition, I’ve added new rules, concepts and checklists — which are both a reflection of email marketing’s growing complexity and my own personal growth as an email marketer. I hope you’ll join me on this journey of incremental improvement.
A blueprint for galvanizing marketing that yields results.
Effective marketing transcends crafting a snappy tagline and a memorable logo. It hinges on the business owner or marketing lead’s comprehension of innovative ideas and ability to recognize strategically creative executions in advertising, branding, and graphic design. This necessitates their willingness to engage and collaborate with creative professionals to develop impactful solutions for their companies and brands.
Arming yourself with the knowledge to collaborate effectively with creative professionals ensures your marketing efforts will stand out and yield tangible results.
Creative quality drives results.
Research substantiates the impact of creative advertising on pedestrian ads–imaginative campaigns outshine the regular ones and even diminish their recall, according to a recent study in the International Journal of Advertising. What is more, new studies from Kantar, a leading data, insights and consulting company, and WARC, which is part of Ascential, a specialist information, data, and information company, show that “creative and effective ads generate more than four times as much profit.”
By integrating strategic creativity, your creative team is positioned to devise solutions that seize attention in a sea of mediocrity. This strategic approach guarantees your branding or advertising campaign won’t merely blend in but instead will capture attention and call people to action.
The A.L.T.E.R. Blueprint: forged in strategic creativity, designed for success:
Attract: Command attention and spark conversations and shares.
Lodestar: Build around a North Star core idea that aligns with your brand’s mission, values, and purpose.
Timely: Timing is everything–make sure your ideas resonate with current cultural conversations.
Engage: Stoke interest and motivation, prodding audiences to take action.
Resonate: Address the aspirations and needs of your audience as individuals, not just an intended target.
Craft a unique and striking signature look and feel.
Distinctive branding and advertising hinge on skillful design and art direction. Creative professionals thoughtfully orchestrate the synergy between copy and images, brand voice, typography, and overall design to forge indelible creative solutions–visual messages that resonate powerfully and differentiate your brand.
Make strategic creativity your superpower.
Embrace the game-changing power of strategic creativity to propel your brand or company into the spotlight, irrespective of scale, forging meaningful connections that resonate with your intended audience and inspire action. Keep in mind, for creativity to thrive in the business realm, it must be thoughtfully planned by creative professionals–it’s about captivating your audience and driving the outcomes you envision. Your business deserves nothing less. In a 24/7 world where attention is the ultimate currency, strategic creativity stands as your ultimate advantage.
Dept’s Sam Huston charts the complexity of the modern customer journey. It’s one, Huston argues, that is constantly moved by the ripples of algorithmic dominance.
The convergence of brand and performance media creates butterfly effects across the consumer journey. This means that even small changes in a marketing campaign can have significant, unpredictable consequences. For example, a study by Google found that a personalized ad can increase click-through rates by up to 20%. However, if the same ad is shown to a consumer who has already purchased the product, it could backfire and damage the brand’s reputation.
The divergence of individual media consumption habits is further exacerbating this butterfly effect. In the past, consumers were more likely to consume media in a linear fashion, meaning they would see the same ads multiple times. This made it easier for marketers to build brand awareness and positive sentiment. However, today’s consumers are much more likely to consume media in a nonlinear fashion, meaning that they may only see an ad once or twice. This makes it more difficult for marketers to reach their target audiences and to have a lasting impact.
Culture at the speed of algorithms
Algorithms are playing an increasingly important role in this new marketing landscape. They’re used to target consumers with personalized ads, to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and to make predictions about consumer behavior. In some cases, algorithms can even have a direct impact on product sales and brand adoption.
For example, a study by Nielsen found that consumers are more likely to trust recommendations from friends and family than traditional advertising. However, an algorithm can use social media data to identify which consumers are most likely to be influenced by their friends and family, and then target them with personalized ads that are more likely to be effective. Culture now moves at the speed of algorithms, and Brands need to be prepared to move at the same speed reacting to the butterfly effect in real time.
The great convergence
The convergence of brand and performance media, the divergence of individual media consumption habits, and the growing importance of algorithms are all creating a new marketing landscape that is more complex and unpredictable than ever before. Marketers who understand and adapt to this new landscape will be the ones who are most successful in the years to come. However, those unprepared for this new reality may find themselves at a significant disadvantage.
Need convincing? Here’s some cold, hard data for you:
A study by Salesforce found that 70% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that they have interacted with on social media.
A study by Gartner found that by 2023, 80% of marketing budgets will be spent on digital channels.
A study by the World Economic Forum found that by 2025, artificial intelligence will create 133m new jobs – and displace 75m others.
These data points suggest that the future of marketing is increasingly digital and data-driven. Marketers who embrace these trends will be well-positioned to succeed in the years to come. Those unprepared for this new reality may find themselves at a significant disadvantage.
Feature Image Credit: According to Dept, the modern customer journey is buffeted by butterfly effects of algorithms and media convergence / Drz via Unsplash
We catch up with the rental app’s marketing boss, Hiroki Asai, to hear why he shifted its strategy so dramatically and how he’s confident it has now found a winning long-term formula.
An Airbnb ad launched today spotlights the perks of staying in one of its rentals rather than traditional hotels. In one of three playful, animated short films, a group of friends is ready for a relaxing, kiddo-free vacation – only to find the hotel pool teeming with screaming children. Luckily, the travellers find solace in a picture-perfect thatched-roof Airbnb with a peaceful, private pool. “Get an Airbnb and get a place to yourself,” a voiceover chimes.
The spot is part of a new brand campaign that will roll out across the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and a handful of other markets across the globe throughout the coming weeks.
It comes on the heels of the brand’s multichannel spring campaign, which spotlighted Rooms – Airbnb’s newly-rebranded offering of private rooms within shared homes – by telling the story of individual hosts from across the globe and the unique experiences that can come with a Rooms stay.
These and other Airbnb marketing efforts of the last few years evidence a broader paradigm shift in the way the brand aims to connect with and engage audiences everywhere. It’s a shift that began with the Covid-19 pandemic.
A strategic shift
When the pandemic upended the travel and tourism industry in 2020, Airbnb lost about 80% of its business overnight. As Brian Chesky, the company’s chief executive, told entrepreneur and ‘This Week in Startups’ podcast host Jason Calacanis: “We were staring into the abyss.”
Although the existential disruption may have easily sunk the business, Chesky and his team were determined to tackle the crisis opportunistically.
The challenge wasn’t in the remit of product, operations or finance alone. Marketing, too, would play a critical role. “It basically turned the company upside down – but it was also an opportunity to reimagine Airbnb a little bit and take a look at what the next iteration of Airbnb would be,” chief marketing officer Hiroki Asai tells The Drum.
The company’s founders, including Chesky, chief strategy officer Nathan Blecharczyk and chairman Joe Gebbia, sought to make Airbnb “a much simpler company” says Asai – one that was “creatively driven,” with brand and design at the heart of the corporate story.
For Asai, who has been at Airbnb for about three and a half years, the approach felt natural. The executive began his career as a graphic designer before spending 18 years on the marketing team at Apple. A core focus on design and brand-level storytelling is in his DNA.
Pre-pandemic, Airbnb’s marketing strategy was primarily performance-driven, with much of the brand’s marketing budget dedicated to digital advertising. But when the pandemic flipped the business on its head, performance marketing wasn’t delivering what the brand needed. Asai tells The Drum: “The problem was that Airbnb wasn’t able to put its own message out into people’s minds and out into the market, so the messages were being driven by reactive PR and comms and basically what the world and what social media was talking about. Airbnb kind of lost control of the brand a little bit – and of the message and the narrative.” To regain control of the narrative, Airbnb decided to dial back its investment in performance marketing significantly.
Instead, Asai says, the plan was to “go back to the core of what Airbnb was about – which is about core hosts, primary homes and guests.” The brand poured marketing dollars into communicating this message with big, bold brand campaigns instead of performance-driven buys.
It was a much-needed strategic adjustment, in Asai’s view. “As Airbnb was growing, pre-pandemic, it was losing its differentiation. There were a lot of competing options for travellers out there and Airbnb … was losing its uniqueness. It was losing its sense of brand and who it was. So, coming out of the pandemic, the decision was to really focus on the core business and to focus on creating experiences, creating features and creating a product … to differentiate ourselves – and then to use brand to actually communicate and teach people what those differences are.”
Keeping product and brand in dialogue at all times
The brand began to invest deeply in developing and highlighting specific features and tools that set its product and experience apart. For example, a key focus of the last few years has been building out Airbnb Categories – classifications of home types, styles and locations that help users find inspiration, discover unique stays and narrow down their search. Last year, Airbnb launched a campaign showcasing its range of over 60 Categories to explore on the platform – from treehouses and off-the-grid cabins to private islands and luxe mansions. It told the stories of travellers staying in some of the platform’s most unexpected and exciting homes, like a giant potato in Idaho and a cave home in Utah.
As Asai explains: “At the core of what we need to do is to create a product and experience that’s different than any other service. And to do that, we need to innovate on the software, on the technology. And we want to use brand not just to advertise our values and what we’re about – we also want to use brand to help explain what these features are and how they make for a different experience.”
And the shift change has largely paid off. Following the decision to reduce performance marketing spend, Airbnb’s traffic levels reached 95% of what they had been in 2019 before the pandemic. Chesky said in 2021 that the brand would never again rely so heavily on performance marketing. And two years after the decision to reallocate marketing spend, the company reported its most profitable fourth quarter on record in February 2023. Revenue jumped 24% year-over-year, helping Airbnb reach an Ebitda of $506m for the quarter.
Since the strategy is proving effective, Asai and his team are only digging deeper into ways to communicate product differentiators through a brand-first approach. Airbnb’s Rooms campaign earlier this year, he says, has been a successful example. “Our approach is that product development and marketing should go hand-in-hand. We’ll work off of one central customer insight that then feeds what we do on the product – and that same insight also feeds how we market it and how we talk about it in paid media and in PR.”
With Rooms, the central insight was that many Airbnb users were interested in more cost-effective stays but were sceptical of staying in a shared home where they knew very little about the host. “The barrier that’s keeping [users] from booking Rooms is that they really don’t know who that host is and need some insight. That led to this idea of a Host Passport and adding more than just kind of dry facts [and instead adding] more insights into the space, who the host is, the hosting journey, why they’ve decided to rent the room, the story of their home. Then that same insight fed the advertising in a way that put the experience [front and center].”
The in-housing philosophy
Airbnb is able to keep product and marketing so tightly interwoven in large part due to the brand’s in-housing model, according to Asai. Not only is all product development and technology design done in-house, but so too is the company’s marketing and advertising. As the executive puts it: “What that allows us to do is to have a very, very tight system for all customer-facing things, from marketing down to product – and to work off of one insight in an extremely integrated and consistent way.”
Operationally, too, Asai says, in-housing makes sense for Airbnb as it helps the company run a tighter ship. “It’s so much easier to not deal with multiple agencies and to not deal with what the agency wants to do versus what you want to do – plus timelines, cost, just the layers of management you have to have to keep those relationships going. More importantly, I think you get a much better creative product when you have the people that create the advertising sitting literally right next to the people that make the product.”
It’s an approach Asai believes in wholeheartedly. “I’m really bullish on in-housing creative because I’ve worked on both sides of the fence – I’ve worked on the agency side, on the design firm side, then as an in-house creative and then ultimately on the marketing side. I’ve seen all ends of it and I really think people with a creative background get short changed working on the service side – I think amazing work happens out of agencies, but I think for creative to grow, they really need to be exposed to everything that happens upstream … and everything that happens downstream. Being in-house really gives you that visibility in that breath. Ultimately, it makes you a better designer, makes you a better art director, makes you a better writer.”
Nonetheless, he acknowledges that in-housing may not be the appropriate model for every brand. He admits it can be “a very difficult thing to manage.” Airbnb, in his opinion, is uniquely poised to benefit from the model because of its roots in commercial creativity. “The reason it works for Airbnb is because we have creative founders and creative leaders. Our CEO was trained as a designer, so he has a unique understanding of the creative process and can champion it and make it work and he is really involved in the work.” But in-housing, Asai says, “is really not for everyone.”
Mapping out new frontiers
When it comes to the brand’s future, Asai is confident that the continued integration of product and marketing will be a boon to the brand’s success.
As it looks to the future, a major focus for the brand in the near- to medium-term is expansion into new markets. It’s a goal Chesky spoke about openly on the company’s latest earnings call earlier this month: “The next big focus for Airbnb is reliability. If we can make Airbnb even nearly as reliable in many markets as hotels, I think you’re going to open up a whole new generation of travelers to Airbnb.” In particular, the company is eyeing Asia Pacific, which Chesky says represents “a huge opportunity for growth.”
It’s a plan that Asai is eager to take part in, adding: “It’s also super exciting to be able to introduce Airbnb to whole new audiences and cultures.”
As the company aims to expand, a focus on brand-centric marketing will remain a key part of the growth strategy, with Chesky saying during that Q2 earnings call: “When you invest in a brand, when your brand’s a noun and a verb, and you have something unique, you get a lot of … benefits. And I think it’s going to be consistent and we’ll have pretty consistent marketing spend as a percent of revenue over time because of the strength of the brand.”
The 30- or 60-second TV spot – the ‘hero ad’ – has long been the prestige centre of ad campaigns. Is it time for that approach to die? PMG’s Scott Everett thinks so.
This might be controversial on the tailwinds of celebrating Cannes Lions, but it’s time to stop making hero ads the hero of every brand story.
The almighty 60- and 30-second spots that we have long revered as the centrepiece of every brand campaign are no longer the most important components of the marketing mix. That’s not to say that TV advertising and brand-building storytelling are not important, but it is time to acknowledge that advertising has fundamentally evolved. Today’s brands need a more nimble and data-driven creative model that recognizes live TV audiences are shrinking, streaming and social viewership are on the rise, and our creative canvas is exploding with opportunities to make advertising work harder and perform better.
Creatives have long put their faith into hero ads for building brands, but right now, we have an opportunity to embrace the power of integrated creative in telling stories and driving business impact. With audiences and engagement more fragmented than ever, customer journeys aren’t linear, and our creative strategies can’t be either. That means creative must be more unique, more complete, more agile, and in more places than ever before.
In media agencies, creative teams are benefiting from the innovation and inspiration that come from creative, strategy, and media working together. We are serving an increasingly complex and competitive marketing landscape, informed by new behaviours, artificial intelligence, and breaking through in new mediums ranging from Netflix to TikTok and Reddit.
Never before have we had more audience signals or indicators of intent helping us move people along the journey from awareness to purchase. Equally, never before has the journey been less of a straight path than it is today.
Mastering this creative flywheel is the hardest and most important job ahead of brands and creatives working together to build high-performing marketing strategies. Here’s how we can better align for the full-funnel future.
1. Build a flexible and robust story platform that fuels a high-performing media plan
Brand versus performance. Data versus instinct. Creative versus creators. Super Bowl spots versus Performance Max ads. It’s not either/or, and we all must embrace the healthy tension of building a plan together.
A flexible creative storytelling platform is a comprehensive, consistent library of stories that fuels a smart media plan, facilitating real-time iteration, optimization, and learning. When everyone is operating from the same blueprint and playbook, creatives can flex into any opportunity, planned or unplanned, and advertising works harder to deliver more for the brand.
2. Plan for speed and agility
While our creative palette for building cultural relevance has expanded, speed to market is critical. Everyone must work together across strategy, insights, creative, and media to adapt to where consumers are and what they expect from advertisers. Once everyone is aligned on the brand’s objectives, teams can be empowered to deliver impact in real time. This can be anything from partnering to accelerate the media and creative working hardest to leaning into emerging opportunities like AI, the metaverse, first-mover advantages with creators and platform partners, and any number of new ways of bringing creative ideas to market.
3. Embrace the white space between brand and performance
While TV ads are great for building broad awareness, product ads can be untapped opportunities for creatively engaging with a brand’s audience. Too many advertisers continue to bridge brand-to-conversion with discount messaging rather than creating a cohesive storytelling strategy around building brand and product love. The middle funnel is the creative frontier that makes all marketing work harder, and it’s beckoning us to think beyond the creative approaches of the past.
Technology advancements in this area are particularly exciting. For example, at PMG, we’re using AI to determine real-time creative insights that tell us what creative is performing best in any given moment, based on creative elements ranging from colour to product types to backgrounds or the use of models.
Once we let go of making hero ads the hero, creative can work harder across the full customer journey. Integrated creative can then truly become the hero of helping businesses meet their goals and accelerate into the future.
As new event paradigms dawn, event sponsorship is dying, says Lively’s Mike White. Promoters and brands clinging to the traditional sponsor paradigm will be left in the dust.
Marketers have long turned to events as an advertising vehicle, for good reason. Event marketing is one of the most impactful channels for bringing a brand story to life. A study about the influence of events showed that 93% of consumers feel live events have a larger influence on them than television ads.
It makes sense. Events afford brands an opportunity to build brand awareness with consumers in controlled environments that leverage a shared community, a moment in time, and a unique experience. When executed well, exposure to engaged audiences correlates with brand lift from association with popular events and entertainers.
But while there’s no question about the efficacy of events, the live event paradigm is desperately in need of a modern refresh.
Traditional experiential balances competing objectives
The first issue to overcome is a misaligned incentive structure that’s baked into traditional event sponsorship. Consider the typical brand-promoter deal wherein brands and promoters have different respective objectives.
Promoters want to sell tickets and add revenue to their bottom lines. Brands want to sell their products and achieve ROI from their investment. Since events are costly to produce, they often capture a sizable chunk of an annual marketing budget and, therefore, are under intense scrutiny.
This brand-promoter paradigm doesn’t even consider the motivations of audiences to participate in a one-of-a-kind experience, or the aspirations and needs of the event’s entertainers. (All parties, crucially, want to build community. More on that later.)
A new event paradigm: from sponsorship to partnership
The last two decades of my career on the bleeding edge of live and hybrid event production have taught me a critical lesson: because of disparate objectives between brand, promoter, sponsor, and audience, it can be hard to orchestrate a positive experience for all parties.
This is why sponsorship needs to be put to rest and partnership needs to take its place.
Under a partnership dynamic, all stakeholders invest and align on goals, using the following 4 steps.
1. Shift the event objective
First, marketers need to refocus the event objective to one goal that all stakeholders have in common: community building.
The objective is to convert event audiences who are there for the event’s entertainment into an always-on community so that you can create conversation and grow relationships and engagement over time.
This should align key stakeholders around a measurable goal, and overcome potential pitfalls of different objectives.
2. Integrate technology
Today’s audiences occupy more than a physical space in time. At any given moment, they’re connected to multiple environments across digital touchpoints, including social media channels, mobile applications, and other communication and streaming platforms.
To lose sight of these digital spaces is an immense opportunity lost, since an audience’s engagement in the context of multiple channels can expand the footprint of an event while building a shared community for the event’s partners.
At Lively, we’re highly attuned to these touchpoints. We call them ‘experiential media ecosystems’. When stakeholders are intentional about these ecosystems, they become owned channels for communication and engagement that live well past the one-time event.
Not only does this allow brands to experience sustained gains, but inviting audiences into an owned community offers rich and actionable data that can help marketers iterate meaningfully on strategy.
3. Focus on authenticity
Looking at event execution as a partnership means all parties align on the audience they want to engage. Authentic engagements between creative, sponsor, and audience are essential to successful activation.
Once brands and creators align on audience and messaging, brands can and should relinquish control to creative to allow them to communicate with audiences in ways that resonate genuinely.
4. Grow and engage the community over time
Event promoters have traditionally pushed back against hybrid and other tech-enabled events because they fear that streaming live events might take away an incentive for an in-person ticket purchase.
Promoters need to evolve their thinking, because streaming can expand the reach of live events, engage new audiences, and create fomo.
The content shared at live events does not replace the in-person experience. Instead, when events are well-executed, it makes our peer groups want to attend the following year.
If all three parties can benefit from an owned event community, it allows the audience to be engaged far beyond the event in interesting and meaningful touchpoints.
More than ever, events are ripe marketing vehicles for brand marketers. Ensuring that stakeholders are aligned is the key to reaping the benefits of experiential activations. Integrating technology to build and engage a community that lasts beyond the event invites new audiences and fortifies event interest. Promoting the community alongside all stakeholders will ensure that event ROI is even more than the sum of its parts.
Musk’s revamped X network ushers in X Pro, formerly known as TweetDeck, behind its verified Twitter Blue tier.
The Gist
Transforming TweetDeck. Now a subscriber-only product called X Pro.
Pay to play. Users must be Twitter Blue verified.
X Pro view. Control multiple timeline columns in one interface.
In a move that could reshape the digital marketing landscape, Elon Musk’s revamped social network, X (previously Twitter), has unveiled its rebranded social media dashboard: X Pro, the successor to the well-loved TweetDeck. Long serving as the go-to platform for marketers juggling multiple brand and client accounts, X Pro is now ensconced behind a paywall, accessible exclusively to verified users of the platform.
The shift to a subscription model comes with its own set of perks, but at a price. Joining the “Twitter Blue” tier will set users back $8 monthly or $84 annually. In return, subscribers gain the coveted blue check mark, the power to edit tweets and a streamlined experience with prioritized rankings in conversations, searches and notably fewer ads.
For marketers, however, the key question remains: Will the benefits of X Pro justify its cost, or will they be forced to re-evaluate their social media management strategies?
From TweetDeck to X Pro: Will Marketers Embrace the Evolution?
TweetDeck served for years as a valuable tool for many marketers, with multiple account management capabilities, real-time monitoring and scheduled tweets — the collaborative platform also provided customizable columns to track specific hashtags, mentions, lists, keywords and the ability to perform competitor analysis.
Originally an independent app from 2009-2011, TweetDeck Ltd. was subsequently acquired by Twitter Inc. and integrated into Twitter’s interface, soon becoming one of the platforms’ most popular features — especially among marketers.
But the question remains, with the rebrand to X Pro, will the latest incarnation offer marketers even more?
What Can X Pro Offer Marketers?
In July, the company unveiled plans for a “new, improved version of TweetDeck.” However, they noted that access would be granted only to verified users, who were given a 30-day notice to secure their verification.
Mainly viewed as a name rebrand (as well as a new revenue source), the current features offered by TweetDeck are expected to remain with X Pro.
Among X Pro’s currently known features and facts:
All users will be able to continue to access their saved searches and workflows.
All saved searches, lists and columns will carry over and users will be prompted to import their columns when the application is loaded for the first time.
The platform supports full composer functionality, including Spaces, video docking, polls and more.
Teams functionality is temporarily unavailable but will be restored in the coming weeks.
And while X Pro is now offered as a paid service through Twitter Blue, verification does come with some perks. The subscription offers users a suite of enhanced capabilities, including sharing extended videos, the freedom to edit tweets within a 30-minute window, the option to retract tweets before they’re seen by others, the use of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) for profile imagery, and entry to the Spaces Tab, a hub for audio content.
As the digital world continually evolves, so do the tools that marketers rely on. X Pro’s transformation from the iconic TweetDeck signifies not just a name change, but a paradigm shift in how digital marketing tools are packaged and priced. While it brings a fusion of old (and possibly new) features, it’s evident that its success hinges on its value proposition to its core users — the marketers. As the dust settles on this transition, the digital marketing community waits with bated breath, poised to decide if X Pro is indeed the next frontier or a nostalgic nod to an era gone by.
Jennifer Torres, is a Florida-based journalist with more than two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics. Currently, Jennifer is a staff reporter at CMSWire, where she tackles subjects ranging from artificial intelligence and customer service & support to customer experience and user experience design. Jennifer is also the esteemed author of a collection of 10 mystery and suspense novels, and has formerly held the position of marketing officer at the prestigious Florida Institute of Technology. Connect with Jennifer Torres: X
Rachel Klaver is a marketing strategist, specialising in lead generation and content marketing.
OPINION: I’ve used buyer profiles in retail businesses before, but they have just as much merit when applied to a service-based business. I’m not sure why we seem to think humans will be any different depending on whether they are buying a vacuum cleaner or contracting a cleaner. In the end, your services are still products that humans are choosing to spend their money on.
There are nine key buyer profiles we can intentionally (and unintentionally) attract. No one is better than the other, but you and your business will fit some more than others. It’s a matter of being aware of who you’re attracting, who you are ignoring that you could attract, and who you have consciously decided to repel with your marketing and sales style.
I’m a big fan of using the marketing and sales process to help find your ideal clients, by showing them at the outset what your own business values and boundaries are for. A simple example of this is choosing to only email your prospects during work hours, if that’s what you have as a core way of working with your clients. For me, we do the vast majority of work via Zoom. This is why we also do our sales calls via Zoom too. If the person is uncomfortable with this, they may also be uncomfortable with working with us, too.
When I went through the nine buyer profiles I found several I don’t want to attract, and a few I’d like to do better in drawing in. Use this list, and mentally check against it what you could do in your marketing to help these types of people want to buy from your service-based business.
The Browser
For me, my whole marketing approach is to help the browser. I’ve got people on my email list who’ve been there for three years or more before becoming a client.
These curious individuals stumble upon our content, and while they may not be ready to make a purchase right away, we can capture their interest by infusing our content with personality and emotion.
It’s essential to let them get a real sense of who we are, to truly understand our voice and the way we do things. When they resonate with us, they’re more likely to choose us over our competitors who don’t evoke the same connection. These people will choose us because we consistently resonate with them. They didn’t find us when they were ready to buy. But as soon as they are, they’re coming to us (I often get people emailing me saying: “Love your content. Not ready for you yet, but I’m going to be one day!”).
The Bargain Hunter
In writing this I realised this was me. I’m definitely always sniffing around for a good deal. This is an issue because I also don’t believe we should be discounting our products and services to get the sale.
However, we can cater to these types of buyers without discount. We just need to provide great deals.
To grab their attention, we can offer them lower-cost options or limited-time promotions. For me, I’ve learned that by providing resources, workshops, or even my book, that they can engage with at a lower price point, they can get a taste of what we have to offer and develop a stronger connection with us.
I also use free content. I provide that with things like this column, my podcast, my email newsletter and my blogs. They get value, and then it’s my job to show them that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to working with me.
Showroomers
Showroomers are one type of buyer I’m starting to work harder to attract. I’m weirdly reluctant to share testimonials (of which I have hundreds) and feedback. I literally have to force myself to do it.
What I’ve learned is these types of buyers can take a while to make a decision but they are locked in once they decide, and they become incredible word-of-mouth referrers to others. For me, they are worth connecting with.
These savvy buyers are thorough researchers who want to know all the details before making a decision. Testimonials and feedback from other customers become crucial in gaining their trust.
Sharing testimonials that highlight the benefits and outcomes others have experienced can be a powerful tool in showcasing the value of our services. Testimonials help potential customers understand the benefits they can receive by working with us, and they serve as social proof of our expertise and credibility.
The “I’m on a mission”
These are also great clients, and again a section I’ve ignored in my marketing without realising it. Again this comes down to a reluctance to “show off” in my content. I’m working on this as I’m teaching my clients to become better at it, and I don’t like being a hypocrite as I do!
These individuals come prepared with a detailed checklist of requirements. To cater to their needs, we must clearly outline the features and benefits of our services.
It’s important to highlight what sets us apart and the specific outcomes they can expect to achieve.
Testimonials play a vital role here as well. They help potential customers envision the results they can achieve by working with us.
However, we don’t need to give them everything they want. It’s ok to have boundaries. I’ve encountered mission shoppers who requested to see strategies I’ve created for other clients. That’s a no from me, as it’s sharing someone else’s document, and also my intellectual property. It’s also often showing them the wrong part of the process, which is the completed document. The strength in my work is in the conversations we have to create it (which again is why I prefer to get them on a Zoom instead).
The Impulse Buyer
This might be a perfect fit for your business, but not for me, unless it’s a lower-cost product like a webinar, my book or a small course.
I often recommend service-based business owners don’t target this type of customer unless you’ve got one that solves a pain point that’s easily resolved, and you aren’t necessarily looking for a repeat purchase.
Impulse buyers make quick decisions based on their gut instincts or limited-time offers. To capture their attention, we can create enticing, low-cost options that allow them to experience a taste of what we offer.
If you’re going to target these buyers, having a chat on your website and being quick to respond to social media questions is key. These buyers want it right now.
The Chatties
I’ve got nothing against this type of buyer, but they aren’t a fit for my personality and business style. It’s not a “them” problem. It’s a me issue. I’ve got ADHD and love to talk. I can easily overshare, and add too much value in a sales call. I’ve had to learn to be pretty strong about moving people off phone calls and on to zooms that we’ve scheduled to prevent my entire week to be filled with chats with potential clients that often lead to nowhere. Boundaries are needed when it comes to me, clients and time.
Chatties are enthusiastic individuals who often seek free advice or consultations without genuine intentions of becoming paying customers. It’s crucial to set clear boundaries and protect our time and expertise.
This is also why I teach my clients to ditch the “discovery call” and rename it a “check the fit” call which has a higher sales intent. You may get less of them, but your conversion rate will go up.
Rather than offering endless free consultations, transitioning to structured sales meetings can guide them towards a more committed decision-making process. It’s an area where I’ve struggled in the past, as I genuinely enjoy helping people and can sometimes give away too much for free.
I’ve learned the importance of creating boundaries and directing these individuals to group interactions where others can benefit as well.
The Indecisive Shopper
Indecisive shoppers take their time when making purchasing decisions. They often have specific obstacles or objections that need addressing.
Patience, providing necessary information, and offering support are key in navigating the indecisiveness. It’s important to stay true to our values and clearly communicate the benefits of our services.
Addressing their objections and concerns while giving them the space they need to reach a decision is crucial.
I’ve learned that when faced with a money objection, it’s not merely about the cost but about the perceived value and trust that need to be established. Giving them time and ensuring they have all the information they need is incredibly important
I personally can find the key is to not over push, and allow them to take the time they need. Follow-up is key, but be wary of converting them before they are ready. It will cause you no end of pain as they stay indecisive as you work with them.
Unsplash
Indecisive shoppers take their time when making purchasing decisions. They often have specific obstacles or objections that need addressing. (file photo)
The Fully Educated
These buyers are slow to act, but when they do they come in hot. Educated buyers are well-informed individuals who have followed our content for years. They have done their research and have a deep understanding of what we offer.
Nurturing these relationships requires consistently providing valuable content through various channels. Our website should be clear and informative, while regular promotions and offers can keep them engaged and interested.
It’s important to provide actionable opportunities for them to take the next step in their journey with us. I normally recommend dedicating 10% to 20% of our content to serve these educated buyers is essential. They have invested time in us, and we should reciprocate by offering content that caters specifically to their needs.
The Loyal Customer
Service-based businesses can build a highly successful business by harnessing the magic of these types of buyers. They book and rebook with us, they tell others about us, and they always remember to pay.
Our loyal customers deserve our utmost appreciation. They have stuck with us through thick and thin, and they become our biggest advocates. Offering exclusive discounts, early access to new offerings, and free resources is a way to reward their loyalty.
These loyal customers often refer others to our business, and their support is invaluable. Recognising their loyalty and showing gratitude helps solidify our relationship and build long-lasting partnerships.
Understanding these nine buyer profiles allows us to tailor our marketing approach and connect with potential customers on a deeper level. By recognising the specific profiles that resonate with our business, we can identify areas where adjustments can be made in our marketing strategies to help talk to the best buyer types for our business model. It’s important to remember that patience, value, and consistency are key when engaging with different buyer profiles.
It’s absolutely fine to have several types that you don’t cater to. The key is to take the time to really think about which types work best for your business, then create content in your marketing that helps them get ready to buy. This can grow your business, without significantly changing what you are selling.
Feature Image Credit: Mark Taylor/Stuff
By Rachel Klaver
Rachel Klaver is a marketing strategist, specialising in lead generation and content marketing.
