Facebook’s version of Craigslist now has over 1B users
If you thought classified websites were a thing of the past, we have some news for you.
They’re still alive and kicking: Classified websites are still very popular. Craigslist receives 336 million visitors per month, with 93% of them coming from the US.
With its recent announcement that FB Marketplaces now has over a billion users and million shops, Facebook has confirmed that classified sites remain a dominant force.
Not just for used items: At its core, Facebook Marketplace is an e-commerce marketplace primarily used for the sale of used items.
However, there are many listings where people are selling new items. Are these new items being purchased, or are sellers wasting their time?
The Crew’s Take: Yes – on classified websites, people buy both used and new items.
If you’re on a tight budget, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and other similar sites can be an excellent place to start with e-commerce. But, they’re not eBay: Many buyers expect the seller to be from the same area.
However, we’ve seen some people use cash-on-delivery to creatively solve this problem. Plus, Facebook Marketplace is providing increasing capabilities for non-local sellers.
Google released a hefty update
Google has just released version 7 of their Google Ads API.
What’s new: There are far too many changes to mention them all.
The highlights (and most relevant) for you have to do with SKAdNetwork reporting, bid strategies and campaign simulations, and some cool keyword planning features.
The release notes cover everything, well worth a deep dive if you used the Google Ads API in any way.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
Peel-ing off the cover on this fresh deep dive
Peel is a phone case company. That’s one of the most crowded niches we can think of, yet they were able to build a strong brand and they’re expected to gross $6M.
Insights members get the full deep dive tomorrow, 1st May 2021.
Have a look at the preview for free here.
The complete deep dive is a 100+ page beast diving into what Peel does well and what they can do better for product pages, funnels, social ads, email, SEO, Amazon and more. As always, we try to leave no stone unturned.
Subscribe to Insights for $99/month. You will get instant access to:
- Snow and Morning Brew deep dives. In total, they are over 250 pages of insights on marketing strategy and tactics from two very successful companies.
- The new deep dive on Peel on 1st May 2021. Learn how this phone case company stands out in a low-barrier to entry, highly competitive market and how you can navigate such a space too.
- Weekly live community calls.
Try it out risk-free for $99/month. If it’s not for you, just message us within 24 hours of your sign up and we’ll refund you.
COPYWRITING
How to use curiosity to gain power over your prospects’ mind
Have you ever binge-watched a Netflix show?
Then you know exactly how powerful curiosity is. And how frighteningly well our brain reacts to open loops.
Curiosity helps you draw your readers into your article or your viewers into your video. But how do you create curiosity?
Brendan Hufford shared five very simple, but not obvious, “curiosity levers.” They were included in a research paper on curiosity in 1994. Let’s leverage the power of curiosity:
1) Ask a curiosity-inducing question. One example is: “Do you want to know a scientifically proven mind-trick to force your readers to finish your article?” Come on, who wouldn’t want to know that.
2) Start a sequence of events, but don’t finish it right away: When Game of Thrones was airing, it was impossible to avoid “what will happen next” conversations with friends and coworkers throughout the week. That was the goal: Make people come back to watch the next episode and the next one after that.
3) Do something unexpected. A lot of Facebook advertisers do this in their video ads. They insert a short frame of an awkward image at the beginning of the video to make the user stop scrolling, and watch the rest.
4) Fuel their FOMO by implying you have the information they don’t. Phrase your headline and your introduction in a way that introduces your readers to the topic, while also signaling that you know something they don’t.
5) Insinuate that they used to know something that they’ve forgotten. This is extremely effective because it stimulates their adversity to loss. “You had precious information in your hand but you lost it”. It almost feels like you lost money, and now you can get it back.
You can use curiosity in different ways. In your headline to entice people to read the rest of the page. In the first paragraph of your sales page. At the beginning of your video ads to hook the viewers. In your email sequence to make them open your next messages.
Curiosity is powerful. But the challenge nowadays is finding something new that stimulates people, because marketers have abused it for years.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
FACEBOOK: After failing to monetize WhatsApp several times, Facebook decided to at least allow its advertisers to create Facebook Ads directly from the WhatsApp Business App.
SEO: Domain authority is not everything. According to Barry Schwartz, brands place far too much emphasis on it.
PINTEREST: According to the most recent Pinterest data, Gen Z is fully prepared to travel and socialize. Who would have thought?
TWITTER: Not to be left behind by its peers, Twitter added 12M daily active users in the first quarter.
INSTAGRAM: Users can disable video during an Instagram Live session.
GOOGLE: Wondering how to get more of their pages indexed via “Report an Indexing Issue”?
BRAIN TEASER
Re-arrange the letters, O O U S W T D N E J R, to spell just one word. What is it?
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.
Let’s build a portal through the Earth
It’s a Google experiment called Floom.
When you open it, Floom will open augmented reality tunnels to the other side of the globe right in your browser.
Try it and let us know where you’ll end up. Maybe at the Maldives or maybe on a container ship across the Suez Canal…