MAKRETING
Memes are a dangerous game for marketers
Some things just aren’t meant to be together. The sun and the moon, TikTok and the U.S. government, crunchy peanut butter and literally anything – the list goes on. Chief on that list, though, might be brand marketing and memes.
Yes, memes are great. And, yes, brand marketing is great. But the combo? It’s tough to pull off. In light of Budweiser starting the hunt for a CMO (where the ‘M’ stands for memes, of course), Digiday has published an excellent article about why it can be risky for brands, and what marketing experts have to say about it. These are the key points:
- Most brands don’t understand meme culture well enough to thrive in it. Kuba Kierlanczyk, director of insights and strategy at Kelton, told Digiday that “memes are a different language than brands are used to.” If you don’t think your brand is a home run hit for a meme campaign, it might be good to pump the brakes.
- If you’re making memes for a brand, make sure they feel like memes – not ads. You don’t want your brand to come off as trying too hard to fit in, and people are incredibly picky about memes. Make sure yours don’t look like ads!
- Sometimes, memes can be successful. Slim Jim’s Instagram page is memes done right – the account’s grown from 5k to 1.1M in the span of a few years.
The Crew’s take: Nothing’s worse than a bad meme. If you decide to start memeing it up for your next campaign, take a couple of these bits of advice with you. Another angle to consider is what happened with AirPods – the product itself became a meme organically, which is the best possible way that success can happen.
E-COMMERCE
Outsource, outsource, outsource
Scaling an e-commerce site is exciting. But, for many, it’s one of the hardest aspects of the business.
Fortunately, Sergey Bodnar took to the Ecom Empires group on Facebook to ask store owners making at least $50k a month what to prioritize and outsource as business grows.
If you’re wondering what to prioritize as your site scales, check these tips out:
- Outsource customer service as quickly as possible. This was the most common sentiment in the Facebook thread, and it’s good advice. Handling customer service inquiries personally takes more time than you can afford if you’re going to scale successfully!
- Make sure your supplier is ready to scale. If you’re dropshipping and fulfillment isn’t taking place in-house, it’s important to keep a solid line of communication to ensure you’re ready for growth.
- Hire people for the tasks you’re not good at. It’s basic advice, but once you can afford to focus on what you’re good at, outsource everything else!
As exhilarating as it can be to scale rapidly, it’s important to make sure your business is ready – if the proper systems aren’t in place, everything can collapse as quickly as it was built.
SPONSORED BY AFFILIATE LEADERS ONLINE
Why are 3000 affiliate marketers locking themselves at home for 48 hours on September 8?
No, it’s not what you think…
It’s because they want to listen to the 40 industry experts that will speak at the Affiliate Leaders Online event, and witness the crazy AI after party.
What’s Affiliate Leaders Online?
Affiliate Leaders Online is a new interactive virtual event that will take place on September 8 and 9. Industry champions will join to share knowledge, thoughts, and obviously, expand their network.
Case studies, experiences, tricks, insights, an intense exchange of virtual business cards… and a show that will make partying at home the new “going out.”
It’s free to attend and the event includes:
- Worldwide coverage: ALO is focused on three strategic regions which are EMEA, LATAM and APAC. This means that you can hear from dozens of experts from all over the world in 3 languages: English, Russian and Portuguese.
- Star speakers and experts: William XCASH, Shirleyson Kaisser, Hen Kinan, Marcos Moura, KJ Rocker, Rafael Gabitov a.k.a. Sensey and many others will share their secrets of success in affiliate marketing.
- Interactivity: Multiple workshops and activities (such as Expert Battles, Affiliate Mania Show, betting on boxing) will be held with the use of innovative technologies.
- Afterparty: The program includes an amazing show, a lottery with a big prize, and a lot of other surprises and entertainment which you won’t find anywhere else!
SURVEY
Got three minutes?
We promise it’ll only take three minutes, and it’ll be a lot less painful than working with rising CPCs this holiday season. Speaking of the holiday season, that’s what this is all about: we’d love to hear from you, and the other 16k marketers reading this, about your plans for Q4.
Shopping season is just around the corner, and we’ve put together this quick (and anonymous!) survey to let us know how your marketing will be adapting.
At the end of September, we’ll analyze it and share all the insights in this newsletter, for free! There won’t be any forms or paywalls to access the data – we’ll be sharing it all, right here.
If you’re working at (or run) an agency, feel free to fill it in with stats from each of your relevant clients.
We’ll make you a deal: Give us 3 minutes of your time, and we’ll give you awesome insights about marketing in Q4.
And share it with your marketer friends – they don’t have to subscribe to fill in the survey or read the report. It’ll be free for everyone on our website!
NETWORKING
Outreach advice that doesn’t suck
How many outreach emails have you sent without getting a reply back?
Or, on the flip side of things, how many have you received that will shamelessly end up in the trash?
The answer to both of those questions is probably a lot, unless you’re one incredibly lucky individual.
Most of the cold emailing advice out there is downright terrible, and it’s part of the reason people continue to send outreach emails so bad they come across as jokes.
Fortunately, Rand Fishkin just put together a thoughtful piece on how to write outreach emails that are actually valuable – check out the highlights:
- Try the anti-outreach approach to outreach. Instead of immediately looking for one → one connections, experiment with a one → many approach. This includes writing helpful tweets and blog posts that get seen by lots of people – which then leads to one of those people reaching out. Can we call this “inbound networking”?
- Ask for things no one else does. “Hope you are doing well; did you check out the resource I sent?” Avoid this. To put it simple, make requests that your contact hasn’t previously received.
- Always get a warm intro. When it’s possible, being introduced works much better than a cold approach.
- Be able to help in compelling ways. Try to restructure your idea of effective outreach to figure out what you can do to help the person you’re reaching out to – what you want can come later.
- Do work that attracts both friends and enemies: Don’t be afraid to cover controversial topics. Being polarizing will help spread your message quicker, especially to the people with whom you have common enemies.
- (Almost) never start with an email: Twitter, LinkedIn comments to a blog post or a Facebook stat. Point being, an email that starts with “…that was a fun exchange we had on Twitter” is always better than “…we don’t know each other, but…”.
These are the strategies provided by Rand. If you find it interesting, his full blog post also provides some tricks such as amplifying your target work, offering a testimonial, building a private amplification group, and others.
You don’t have to do all of these things to see results – if you do even a single one, you’re already worlds ahead of most other emails in the other person’s inbox.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
TIKTOK: Here’s your TikTok drama update: the Chinese government has written a new law that’ll make it more difficult for TikTok to sell to a U.S. company. A competitor, Triller, has shown interest in a purchase, but a TikTok spokesman claimed not to know what Triller is.
SNAPCHAT: It appears Snapchat is rolling out Shortcuts, which make it easier to send snaps to multiple people at once.
SEO: Aleyda Solis is back at it again with an incredibly helpful guide on analyzing your user behavior based on what type of device they’re using.
FACEBOOK: You may soon be able to link your Facebook account to your news subscriptions. The feature is currently being tested, but would make it easier for users to view paid content from publishers.
GOOGLE: Is Google starting to phase out expanded text ads? Some advertisers lost the feature from their dashboard, but the company stated that it was simply a test.
BRAIN TEASER
It’s Monday, which means it’s time to take a wild guess at which subject line from last week got the most opens. These are the options:
🔮Predict the future.
🤑Time to capitalize.
🏃♂️No signs of stopping.
🤐Watch out, Google. (Twitter is absolutely loving this one right now)
Y’all have got it right three weeks in a row. Want to make it four? Vote on Twitter here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
The world’s most expensive sheep
Take a guess: how much money would you expect the world’s most expensive sheep (it’s from Scotland, of course) to cost?
Maybe $10k or $20k?
Not even close. The near-priceless sheep, named Double Diamond, sold for the price of $490k over the weekend – a lot more than a couple of diamonds.
Turns out, the sheep, which is a Texel breed, had near-perfect genetics and was generating plenty of buzz before the sale took place.
Buy a nice home, or buy a sheep…apparently, a sheep is sometimes the better option.