SOCIAL MEDIA
A fresh round of updates
The social media world was buzzing yesterday with a few updates – and some of them were interesting for marketers. Here’s a rapid-fire summary:
- Instagram just launched Remix, it’s copycat feature of TikTok Duets. It was announced in an official tweet, and offers another great way to get some engagement on your Reels.
- LinkedIn is working on a Clubhouse-like audio feature. You can read more about it here, but in essence: It’s going to be an audio networking platform, and LinkedIn thinks it’ll have extra value because it’s connected to your professional profile. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.
- Facebook will soon let users choose who can comment on their posts. Like a similar feature on Twitter, the update to Facebook could create opportunities for public masterminds or marketer-only conversations.
All of the above are real, actionable updates – so as you wade through the April Fools’ jokes today, remember that there is some real news out there.
SEO
Let’s build those links
Moz is a giant in the SEO community, and their guides are known as the gold standard – especially for people who are trying to learn a little more about the industry and how to get things done.
One such ‘gold standard guide’ has been their beginners’ guide to link building.
So it was great news when Cyrus Shepard announced that the guide has been updated for 2021 by its original author, Paddy Morgan.
Check out the beginners’ guide here – it’s a great place to learn.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
Take a peek
Our deep dive on Morning Brew, a 2.4M subscriber newsletter valued at $75M in a sale to Insider is now live in Insights. If you’re a member already, check it out here.
Not a member? Curious what you can find in this deep dive?
- How to grow a newsletter from 0 to 1M highly engaged subscribers. All major growth initiatives Morning Brew used (and still uses today) broken down with examples and explained how well they work.
- How to create a powerful referral program and giveaways to increase your newsletter subscribers.
- The transformation in terms of branding and positioning from a PDF for finance students into the newsletter it is today.
- A one page Twitter playbook from Toby Howell, Morning Brew’s Twitter account manager.
A subscription to Insights also includes:
- Previous deep dives. Our first deep dive was in March on a brand called Snow, a direct-to-consumer teeth whitening product.
- Weekly live Q&As with experts. Christina Szekeres, Savannah Sanchez and Nick Shackelford are scheduled for April already.
- Recordings of past Q&As.
- Over 100 tips, guides and case studies.
- A supportive and knowledgeable community.
Try it out risk free for $99/month. If it’s not for you, you can also message us within 24 hours and we’ll refund you.
FROM THE CREW
Join us!
We don’t do this often… But we’re hiring someone for a part-time role as a daily news writer.
What that means: You’ll be responsible for writing part of, well, what you’re reading at this very moment.
If you’re a damn good writer and love all things marketing, this is for you.
See you on the other side.
MARKETING
Sell me this pen… On Kickstarter
We are quite sure that The Wolf of Wall Street would be proud of David Rekuc and the ModernFuel Kickstarter he managed.
They pre-sold $40k of ModernFuel pens in 2 hours. And here, he shared the whole thought process behind this successful strategy.
+ First, the product: They positioned it as an heirloom-quality bolt action pen that you can adjust for writing style and refill preference.
+ The timing: They settled the launch for Q1 because Q4 has tons of gifting, and Q2 should do very well with graduation season and Father’s Day. Hence, less noise to manufacture a peak. And, two busy seasons ahead to surf the sales wave.
+ They used the product launch to escalate the subscription. And they had three ways email subscribers could escalate their subscriptions with ModernFuel:
- Sign up for SMS.
- Sign up for a calendar invite for launch day.
- Upgrade to the Kickstarter email segment.
SMS subscription was the one they wanted to push the most. For this reason, they used aggressive price points with very limited quantities. Then, they said that SMS subscribers would be notified 2 hours before the launch.
This allowed them to identify the price-conscious customers, but also the most rabid fans. And the SMS campaign had an 80% CTR. Not too shabby, right?
+ Pricing strategy: The goal was to incentivize bundles for AOV.
They created 4 individual units and 4 ways to bundle them. They established 4 pricing phases for the rollout.
When one offer sells out of quantities, the next phase of that same offer is activated, but at a $10 higher per unit.
This strategy accounted for a $160 AOV (average order value), with the lower price point being $95.
This price strategy is definitely something interesting to replicate in a launch, as it allows you to create real scarcity several times. And, it spikes that AOV up.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
FACEBOOK: The company claims that a ‘technical issue’ caused some creators to lose out on thousands in ad revenue.
SEO: Rand Fishkin just put together a short Twitter thread talking about some new SimilarWeb data on 0-click searches. It’s got some good info.
TIKTOK: The social media kiddo is growing. And it’s getting big. In Q1 2021, TikTok was still the most downloaded app.
YOUTUBE: The company is expanding the monetization to more types of content. If you run ads on YouTube, it means your ads can be shown on videos that first were restricted from monetization.
FACEBOOK: You’re now able to ‘turn off’ Facebook’s News Feed algorithm and sort by most recent. However, Facebook still doesn’t let you set ‘most recent’ as your default feed.
BRAIN TEASER
He has married many women, but has never been married. Who is he?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Google has canceled April Fools’*
For the second year in a row, the company won’t pull any pranks.
Back in 2020, the reason for this was the COVID pandemic. And as the pandemic is still hanging around, it’s likely that it’s the same reason this year.
So, if you’re not a fan of brands posting jokes on April 1st, you can consider yourself lucky that Google’s holding back this year.