Facebook unveils some statistics about brand vs. direct response
Everybody wants sales. And because of that, it’s easy to focus on direct response campaigns to rake in the cash from those lower-funnel customers.
But does that mean you’re digging yourself a hole for future performance? Facebook looked at this question in a new study comparing brand (upper-funnel) campaigns with direct response (lower-funnel) campaigns.
The full report is quite long, so we’re breaking down the main points here:
- Taking cost into account, brand campaigns are comparable with direct response campaigns. Although your upper-funnel brand campaigns don’t always have the same level of incremental sales, they tend to be cheaper. Facebook says that when you break the numbers down, both methods become comparable.
- For some industries, upper-funnel marketing is more effective. According to Facebook’s analysis, top-funnel brand campaigns are more effective for short-term sales in industries like e-commerce and retail.
There are plenty more insights in the full report, which you can find here.
The bottom line: Although upper-funnel campaigns don’t always convert right away, they can be just as effective if you’re considering all of the factors. It’s time to get those brand campaigns rolling!
CONTENT MARKETING
How to stay organized with content
When was the last time you sat down and organized your content plan?
If it’s been a while – or you’re feeling disorganized – this is for you. Marketing consultant Fab Giovanetti just put together a guide with some simple tasks that writers and content marketers can do to stay on top of things. These were her points:
+ Weekly: Consolidate your commitment.
It’s easy to bite off more than you can chew. And when that happens, you end up getting less done. Each week, Fab suggests taking a quick review of how you’ve spent your time, and optimizing for how you could improve for the next week.
+ Monthly: Review your marketing efforts.
If you’re not working with a particular goal in mind, you could be puttering around aimlessly – or worse, focusing on vanity metrics. Fab recommends making a list, each month, of the KPIs and goals that you’re targeting. At the end of the month, assess how you did and how you can improve going forward.
+ Quarterly: Refresh your content schedule.
Three months is plenty of time to figure out what’s working, and what’s not. So, at the end of each quarter, analyze what you’ve done and what people responded to. Then, adjust to create better content for the next quarter.
The full context, plus a couple of additional tips, can be found in Fab’s full post on Medium.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
This is the biggest (and coolest) thing we’ve done since starting this newsletter
We really like marketing. For almost three years, we’ve spent five days every week writing about it. But just like how a great chef doesn’t stop at one signature recipe, we don’t want to stop at this newsletter.
From that passion to create something new and valuable for marketers, Insights came to life.
We built it so you can uncover new, timely marketing tactics, strategies and insights – things that companies use right now to grow their business. Here’s what we do:
- We spend 200+ hours dissecting the full marketing strategy of one company every month. Then, we share those insights with you in a 100+ page report.
- We dig into a brand’s website, ads, emails, SEO and all other growth strategies – no channel is ignored (both for pre- and post-purchase).
- We surface the most effective growth strategies, outstanding creativity, the most powerful dark patterns, shocking screw ups, and more.
After you read a deep dive, we want you to know more about that brand’s strategy than Zuck knows about smoking meats.
And that’s just the core of Insights. Once you subscribe, you’ll also find:
- A Stacked Marketer live case study. Just like our annual report, but in real time.
- Monthly strategy discussions around the latest deep dive. The first one is scheduled for March 15.
- 100+ (and ever expanding) tips, guides, case studies and swipe files.
- Weekly hangouts that are your marketing think tank.
Join Insights for $49/month – for as long as your subscription stays active – using the code STACKED49 (early-bird price valid until 31st March 2021).
The first deep dive report is waiting for you.
MARKETING
Forget product marketing, enter “audience marketing”
Before you start thinking about marketing your product, you should analyze your audience. This is important no matter if you’re running a startup, a SaaS company, or an e-commerce store.
This issue of the MKT1 newsletter is exactly about this:
“Founders and marketers need a perspective change, we need to think of product marketing as audience marketing.”
Before you start any marketing initiative, first define your audience. This will help you create a marketing strategy that works.
What should you know about your audience?
- Your audience’s goals and problems, well beyond the scope of what your product solves.
- What other tools your audience uses, or is looking for.
- Where your audience goes for information.
- How your product fits into your audiences’ lives or workflows.
- If and how your product meets your audience’s needs.
- How competitive and complementary products meet your audience’s needs.
When you are aware of each one of these areas, you don’t have to create any marketing strategy.
You just have to assemble all these pieces like a puzzle.
What channel do we use to market our product?
Does our product have the right features?
What content should we create?
The list goes on. And to make this process still easier, the MKT1 team provides a template to fill when researching your audience.
This is the foundation of marketing. However, let The Crew add a final thought…
Sometimes, the best way to understand your audience is by testing. You can spend hours on Reddit, forums, and Facebook groups compiling all the templates you want.
But until you start testing and receive real-life feedback from your audience, you won’t know what they truly want. You won’t know to which content they respond the best. Or, which feature they look for in your product.
So, do spend hours on research. But let the numbers do the talking.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
SEO: This Search Engine Journal article pulls out some highlights from a recent discussion by Google about the Core Web Vitals update. Spoiler alert: the “well, it depends” card did get used.
FACEBOOK: The company just launched a new app, called BARS. It’s like TikTok, but for rapping over premade beats.
SEO: Google’s John Mueller clarified that it might not be a big issue if 30% to 40% of your URLs in Google Search Console are 404s.
CLUBHOUSE: Avid Clubhouse users, rejoice. In-app club creation – without having to apply – is coming in an update at some point this week.
TWITTER: The smart people over at Twitter are hard at work on Spaces, and one of their developers just posted an early look.
BRAIN TEASER
What has 13 hearts, but no other organs?
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.
These deepfakes are getting out of control
The technology to digitally make somebody look like somebody else – aka deepfakes – has been around for awhile now.
But it’s getting better every day, and we’re now to the point where it’s possible to fool people with deepfake technology. Case in point: This new TikTok account, called @deeptomcruise.
There are only a few videos so far, but some of them are so realistic that commenters are questioning whether or not the video is real. (The username gives it away, but it seems like a few people still got fooled.)
So if you ever wanted to see Tom Cruise playing golf or tripping over a desk while talking about Mikhail Gorbachev, the account is certainly worth checking out.