TIKTOK
Warehouses are coming to the US
TikTok and shopping? Obvious.
TikTok and fulfillment? Who do they think they are… Amazon?
Nope, not a prank: TikTok just outlined plans to open fulfillment centers across the US.
The company recently posted job openings on LinkedIn to help them “build an international fulfillment system.”
We’ve seen this before: TikTok’s system would include international warehousing, customs clearings, and domestic and international e-commerce supply chain systems. Kinda like Amazon…
The only difference is TikTok doesn’t intend to create their own fleet of delivery trucks… yet.
Why we care: If this works, TikTok fulfillment centers could give small businesses and brands alike more options for advertising, selling, and shipping products to customers.
Wonder if we’ll see TikTok and Amazon trucks passing each other on the interstate in the future…
First-party cookies for publishers, plus new travel and booking features
Please tell us we’re not the only ones who read the word “cookies” and feel hungry…
Personalized, sort of: Google announced that it’s expanding first-party cookies for publishers, allowing you to “serve personalized ads with minimal technical effort.”
How it works: If given permission, Google Ads and Display & Video 360 will use first-party data from users’ interactions on the publisher’s website to create aggregated audiences.
These audiences will then help advertisers “reach desired customers in browsers where third-party cookies” aren’t allowed.
The feature should roll out next month. It will be interesting to see how it performs…
Get your tickets: Google also announced three new travel and booking features:
- Ticket info is now available on Maps. Users can compare the same tour and various admission prices from different partners directly on Maps. You’ll also see booking links for experiences connected to a particular attraction soon.
- You can edit ticket prices on Google Business Profile instead of using a connectivity partner.
- “Things to do” ads are expanding: This ad format came out last year and is now on its way to more languages and countries. It can appear on individual attraction listings on mobile Search.
Why we care: First-party cookies could help marketers and publishers more easily navigate ever-growing privacy regulations… and maybe improve your ROAS, too. Guess we’ll see.
On the other hand, new travel and booking features should help booking and tour businesses like travel agencies get in front of potential consumers more easily.
Speaking of consumers…
SPONSORED BY ATTEST
Consumer research is easy when 125M people are ready to answer your questions!
There’s a widespread marketing myth that needs busting:
“High-quality consumer research is stressful, expensive, and super time-consuming. It requires expert planning and weeks of work.”
Ummm… that may have been true 30 years ago…
But the market changes fast these days, and accepting that myth means finishing last.
Instead, you can anticipate consumers’ wants while your competitors are still analyzing their results from the last quarter.
How? With Attest, of course.
Attest makes ongoing consumer research fun and easy. It gives you on-demand access to 125M people across 58 countries.
Plus, you get help from a team of research experts whenever you need them—and you obtain accurate insights in days, or even hours!
Find out what your consumers want.
B2B MARKETING
If you want to sell SaaS, you need to create “new value”
Here’s a harsh truth: your awesome SaaS product isn’t gonna sell itself.
Just because you’ve built a brilliant solution and landed a Fortune 500 client doesn’t mean you’ll start printing money.
Most start-ups realize that maintaining an upwards trend at scale—including upselling, cross-selling, retaining, or selling in different markets—requires something more.
You won’t get this by “buying a couple of search ads words or mouthpiecing a company message,” as Mark Cranney writes in his article. Instead, your SaaS needs to create a new value.
Mark uses a personal example from his early career, back when he was selling data center automation solutions to enterprise companies.
Normally, the sales reps ran into walls because enterprise companies didn’t have a budget for data center automation. Makes sense… it’s kinda hard to find budgets if there’s no market!
Mark learned they needed to prove their SaaS offered a different and effective way to do business. He lists three questions you need to answer to sell big:
1 – Why should your customer do anything? First, pinpoint the strategic initiatives of each company, as these will always be funded. Then you can define unique value propositions.
For example, a corporate macro-goal might be 15% annual growth. One of the ways IT can do that is through labor virtualization and off-shoring solutions. Can your SaaS contribute to that?
2 – Why should they choose your solution over competitor’s? If you can determine and meet the necessary criteria, you’ll build a wall competitors have to climb over just to compete.
3 – Why now vs. investing in another area? Once you validate your product and shrug off competition, it’s time to bring the numbers to the table.
You need to display forecast charts, stats, ROI, and practical examples of how and why your SaaS will make your clients’ lives easier by using your SaaS.
Get these right, and you’re ready to sell. So grab your charts and presentations, identify your ideal enterprise clients, and start finding ways to fill the gaps your customers aren’t even aware of!
SPONSORED BY UPFLUENCE
The secret to increasing year-end sales without risking a dollar on campaigns
Want to take advantage of the holiday shopping rush without running campaigns? Three words for you:
Influencers + affiliate program.
It’s easier than you think: Find influencers in Upfluence’s robust database within minutes, send them a unique affiliate link to your ecommerce store, and watch sales come in.
Upfluence helps you manage and recruit creators, track sales generated by each influencer, issue payments, and calculate your campaign ROI…all in one place.
Drive more revenue with influencer campaigns.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
What Oatly’s “carton copy” reveals about product copywriting
If you’ve ever wandered into the dairy alternatives section of the grocery store, you’re almost certainly familiar with Oatly.
You’ve probably picked up a carton. You’ve probably seen the huge paragraphs of witty, almost-poetic copy inked onto the side of the carton.
And, maybe, you’ve taken one home… hopefully after paying for it.
Here’s an example of what you’ll read on an Oatly carton:
“Hello Future Oat Drink Lover. We didn’t write that headline because we have some kind of special ability to see into the future or because we think that as long as you think positively, positive things will happen. Nope.
We just know that despite the fact that there are a lot of alternatives to cow’s milk out there for you to pour into a glass or add to your morning cereal, the combo of oatsome deliciousness and what our products can do for you is rather challenging to find elsewhere.
And because we were the company that made the original oat drink 25 years ago when it wasn’t very cool to make oat drinks, we are pretty sure that if we have had you wait 25 years to try the original oat drink, we wouldn’t disappoint you once we finally got there.
But enough of listening to a philosophizing oat drink carton, give it the ol’ college try and we’ll see you on the other side.”
Two things we can learn from Oatly’s copy:
- Sometimes, it’s OK to throw all the old-school principles out the window. Oatly’s copy works for many people because it feels like a conversation. It’s a message from a friend. It’s fun. Sometimes, that’s just what you need.
- Write friendly copy on your product packaging! Most marketers neglect product packaging copy. But remember… it’s easier and cheaper to get a repeat customer than to find new ones. So try building relationships right on your product packaging.
Finally, we’d love to know: What’s your dairy alternative of choice? Hit reply and let us know.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
PRODUCTIVITY: Task management across departments is painful. Height makes it painless. Want one example? When people chat in Height, it happens in the context of the project, right in the task itself – no more lost Slack threads or endless email chains. Simple. Discover the most flexible team collaboration tool.*
GOOGLE: Auto-created assets? No thanks. Sounds like many Google advertisers got access to the beta version of Google’s automated creative assets, and now they want to find a way to opt out. Not a good sign…
META: No need for FOMO. If you missed this year’s Meta’s Collaborative Ads Summit, you can now see all the event slides and resources. Very cool.
SHOPIFY: How many languages do you speak? Shopify released an app that translates stores into multiple languages so you can connect with international customers. Fenomenale! Oh and there’s a bunch of other updates you should check out.
SEO: If you’ve ever wondered whether premium security plugins give you an edge over your competitors rankings… they don’t. But hey, you got them to protect your site, not to catapult onto the first results page.
ANALYTICS: Say goodbye to Google Data Studio, but don’t cry. The popular business intelligence (BI) platform—and the go-to reporting platform for marketing agencies, among others—will be rebranded under the Looker brand, along with all of Google’s other BI products. Whoa.
*This is a sponsored post
BRAIN TEASER
I take what you receive and surrender it all by waving my flag. What am I?
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.
What’s a butter board?
“Stop… Wait a minute. Hold that board, slap some butter on it.” —Bruno Mars, if he was a part of the most recent TikTok trend.
Ever heard of a butter board? It’s all the rage on TikTok.
It’s a cutting board that contains…
- Softened butter spread over a wooden board.
- Toppings like bacon, cinnamon, onion, lemon, etc.
- Chunks of high-quality toasted bread. Mmm.
And before you scoff into your wine… the #ButterBoard tag on TikTok has more than 230M views!
It’s the little things, you know?