ADVERTISING
Will you join this fast-growing advertising channel?
Hope you’re wearing comfortable headphones…
According to this IAB report, podcast advertising is crushing other channels when it comes to ad revenue growth.
To put it into perspective: Digital advertising revenue went up by 30% last year. Podcast advertising grew by 72%… more than twice that number.
What’s driving this growth:
- Dynamically inserted ads are taking over: Ads being read by podcast hosts are beginning to replace pre-recorded sponsored ads. They now take up to 84% of the space.
- Increasing number of pre-rolled ads: Ads placed before the actual podcast content rose by 10% since 2020.
- Optimal ad length: More than half of podcast ads are now 15-30 seconds long, about 20% longer than two years ago.
Why we care: Podcast advertising is getting better, and ad revenue is expected to triple in the coming years… which means this channel is poised for explosive growth.
If your audience listens to podcasts, now’s an excellent time to start running your own podcast ads.
E-COMMERCE
Buy-now-pay-later shows no signs of slowing down
Several days ago we reported that the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) industry is killing credit cards: 4 out of 5 shoppers turned to BNPL in order to avoid credit card debt.
No brakes on this bandwagon: According to another recently published report, BNPL will be the fastest-growing e-commerce payment method through 2025 in the US and Canada.
How to adapt: Fortunately, accepting BNPL as a payment method is becoming easier for e-commerce marketers.
Shopify, for example, already has a “Shop Pay Installments” option. Your e-commerce platform may have a similar option too.
If your e-commerce platform doesn’t offer BNPL integration, you can always type “BNPL providers [ the country where you sell ]” in your favorite search engine, and you’ll probably find companies that can help.
SPONSORED BY STORYBLOK
Your content management system is slowing you down
Does your content management system (CMS) let you create content once and deliver it instantly on your website, mobile app, as an AR/VR experience, or as voice content?
Probably not. And that’s why marketers are abandoning old monolithic CMS for headless CMS.
That’s what Storyblok discovered after interviewing 515 professionals about their CMS experience.
Download their report now to find out:
- Which CMSs companies are using.
- How 16.8% of marketers increased their traffic with a new CMS.
- The pain points they’re experiencing and how they plan to solve them.
- A CMS shift that helped 82% of the businesses experience an improvement in productivity and increased revenue.
Find out what CMS your peers are using to boost their revenue so you can start boosting yours.
P.S. Wondering what Storyblok is? It’s a headless content management system used by 74,000+ marketers and developers including Netflix, Happy Socks, Decathlon, and Marc O’Polo. Discover how Storyblok can make your life easier.
MARKETING
How this project management tool went from 0 to $20M ARR… in 2 years
That’s right. In 2 years, ClickUp generated 85K paying customers and gained a $4B valuation with annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $20M.
It gets even more interesting when you realize they did that while competing with the likes of Asana, monday(.)com, and Trello.
Nathan Ojaokomo breaks down their strategy here. And his analysis contains some marketing nuggets, like…
The 6 steps ClickUp took to define their product-market:
1) Determine your target customer. ClickUp’s target customer was literally anyone who wanted to be more efficient at managing their project.
2) Identify needs that current solutions do not satisfy. In 2017, there were many project management tools. But they only did one thing well, therefore, people had to use different tools.
3) Based on step #2, ClickUp created a unique value proposition: “One app to replace them all and help you save one day every week. “
4) Specify the features of your minimum viable product (MVP). Based on market feedback, ClickUp created a set of features their MVP had to have.
5) Once they established the features, they developed their MVP, which started as a web app.
6) Finally, ClickUp tested product-market fit by putting their MVP in front of real customers.
Of course, that’s just a snapshot of Nathan’s analysis.
If you want to know how ClickUp generates 767K visits monthly, or how they leverage paid and organic social media, read the entire article.
SPONSORED BY PANDA COPY
Can’t grow your team right now? Don’t worry, you can still grow your agency.
With Panda Copy you get unlimited access to professional copywriters for a flat monthly fee. No sourcing. No vetting. No headaches.
Don’t put a roof on your growth potential.
Scale your business with Panda Copy.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
How to raise prices without angering your customers
So you’ve decided it’s time to raise your prices.
Maybe it’s because your product has grown, maybe it’s due to inflation, or maybe it’s something else.
How do you make the bump less painful to customers?
Here’s what we’d suggest based on our own experience increasing prices at Stacked Marketer:
- Raise your price in chunks, not gradually. Every quarter, we evaluate newsletter growth and adjust our prices accordingly. We don’t change them every week or every month. The less often you raise your prices, the fewer times customers will ever have to think about it.
- Justify price hikes with quality improvements. If we increase readership by 20%, for example, a 10% price hike for an ad slot feels almost generous to sponsors. If you’re selling T-shirts, maybe it’s because you’re using a better fabric quality that justifies the price increase. Frame it this way to ease your customers’ frustration and show them the value they’re getting in return.
- Having a good reason is better than having none at all. It’s much easier to increase your prices if you have a reason for doing so, particularly if that reason is something that benefits your customers. If you’re raising prices due to external factors, try to find ways to justify that increase.
It’s an art, not a science. We don’t have a rigid plan for increasing our prices over any given quarter or year because nobody can predict the future.
The best thing to do is reflect on what’s right for your business, and decide when it’s time to make adjustments.
We hope our suggestions make those adjustments a little easier!
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
INSIGHTS: Why spend time and money testing what works when you can steal ideas from successful brands? Our monthly Deep Dives collect actionable insights from companies like Athletic Greens, Snow, Goli, and others so you can run high-performing campaigns. Learn more here.*
TIKTOK: How’d you like to track foot traffic? TikTok is using Foursquare’s location-based attribution to help you find out if your ads are attracting customers to your stores. Sounds like a useful feature.
SEO: That’s a wrap. Google Search Central Unconference just ended, spanning 25 sessions and covering a variety of Google topics. This article provides a nice little recap for anyone who couldn’t attend.
ADVERTISING: Playing hard to skip. YouTube has numerous design variations of the “Skip Ad” button—and it’s deliberately making the feature unpredictable to users.
E-COMMERCE: Unlikely partners in Prime. Amazon has been quietly teaming up with local mom and pop shops in a trial delivery program for rural areas.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
You see a boat filled with people, yet there isn’t a single person on board. How is that possible?
You can find the answer here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Now you can share your review… of earth
You know how important social proof is, right?
Now imagine our entire planet is a simulation and you can rate everything that exists on a scale of one to five.
This fun little website lets you review things like acne, clouds, watermelons, and countless other experiences and objects.
One user left this review for small talk, which is currently rated 1.9/5.
“Not enough conversation topics please change in the next update – 3 stars out of 5.”
Obviously they have never read our Poolside Chat section.