🐇 Straturday Night 🕳️
A small strat(egy) stack snack pack for your Saturday night (and your 2023).
I’m at the point where I’m thinking of most things in terms of what I’ll do with them next year. Only immediately dealing with anything that can’t be a January problem.
📓 Strat Stack Snack Pack
Here’s what I’m stocking my strategy toolkit with to kick off the new year.
Start every strategy by answering this question (~15:22):
Are you trying to capture demand or are you trying to create demand?
Use a go-to starting budget breakdown that aligns with the answer.
The Marketing Against the Grain guys that asked that question recommend the following, and it sounds good to me.
If you’re trying to create demand, go with:
60-70% creating demand
30-40% capturing demand
Or, even better when we can calculate it:
What % of budget do you need to spend capturing demand to hit revenue targets? The remainder goes to demand creation (branding).
But flip this when it comes to promo times, says Marketing Max:
30% spent daily on prospecting
70% spent daily on retargeting
During heaving promo seasons (like Black Friday), use a 180 day retargeting window.
(This could also be your go-to if you’re just trying to capture demand with ads.)
Framework Fodder
A 4-point plan for matching content / messaging to customer journey stage:
Use brand intro, product demo, and blog posts for people who have never heard of your brand.
Use product demos, influencer videos, and review videos for people who have heard of your brand but haven’t engaged.
Use testimonials & reviews, unboxing, and special offers for for people who have shown interest.
Use up-sell / cross-sell, user generated content and reviews, and referral mechanisms for people who have purchased.
Find An Enemy
Companies that win categories for low differentiation products have amazing marketing. They invest in marketing and they invest in having a clear enemy and being for a clear community of people.
It’s less about the product. Lean into the way it makes your audience feel or the benefit to your audience.
Comparison marketing works, but only if done really well.
-Marketing Against the Grain on Pepsi
Be Pinteresting
Borrowing from the advice I wrote about earlier, I want to test out this Pinterest plan (by making clients make the pins):
Don’t overpin site pages
Make the pins repinnable
Deliver all the value in the pin, but leave enough out to earn a click
Turn each blog post into an Idea pin
Use standard pins for all other content to be promoted
Some Strategy Resolutions for 2023
Test more. Platforms, placements, messaging, creative. Everything. Test it all.
Advertise on podcasts, for real this time. More and more tools are being built to make advertising easier and audiences continue to grow. The time is now.
Pretty much the same as above, but for Connected TV this time.
Something I wrote too small to read, hopefully it wasn’t a great idea.
Transition to Google Analytics 4 while I can still pretend it’s my decision (mark July 1 on your calendars).
Build email lists for any client they’re remotely relevant for. Cookies don’t need to be killed to be cancelled, we are firmly post-cookiepocalypse and need to behave as such.
When it comes to Meta properties, use some ad approaches that keep users on-platform. The company is desperate for revenue which means it will want more users spending more time scrolling, swiping, tapping, and reacting. Which means it’ll be even more reluctant to let people click off to your site. But it also means we may get some new toys to play with as Zuck looks to pry more bucks from brands in uncertain economic times.
Go forth and market. And thanks for reading!
Kyle