People are traveling again, and here’s how you can capitalize
Most of us have had to cancel travel plans once or twice (and if you’re unlucky, a lot more than that) this year – it’s been a tough one for travel. But, as lockdowns continue to ease and people adjust to the new normal, travellers are starting to pack their suitcases and hit the road once again.
Pinterest just dropped a great guide to connecting with customers as interest in travel picks up, along with some stats on what people are talking about on the platform. Let’s jump right into the biggest trends:
- People are re-acclimating to air travel. Though airline volume is still less than half of what it was last year at this time, searches related to air travel have surged in recent weeks. Interest for topics like ‘airplane essentials’ and ‘vacation spots’ has risen by more than 100%.
- Road trips are still a hot topic. Searches on Pinterest for road-trip related topics have risen by up to 248%, with ‘road trip routes’ being a particularly popular search. As air travel is still dicey in some places, look for opportunities around local vacations and trips.
If there’s one thing to take away from these trends, it’s that people are becoming more comfortable with getting out and about – look for opportunities to connect with your customers as they become increasingly travel-minded.
Pinterest recommends personalizing your brand messaging based on people’s passions by understanding how interests are evolving as the world slowly moves towards ‘normal’. Reassuring customers on safety protocols is big, too, particularly for travel-related businesses.
Even though people are traveling again, they still want to be assured the right procedures are in place.
As you start to travel again – hopefully to see some chocolate snow in Switzerland – keep these tips in mind for your ad campaigns!
SURVEY
Let’s predict the future together!
October 1st is an important day for marketers. Can you guess why? It’s because the infamous Q4 – aka shopping season in the West – officially starts.
This year will be greatly impacted, probably, by a little something called a global pandemic. Physical stores are not doing their usual Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, so all the action is going to move online.
That’s where you come in – along with 16k other marketers reading this. We want to help you prepare for a wild Q4 by crowdsourcing some insights about how e-commerce advertisers plan to spend their ad budget in the coming quarter.
We’ve put together a quick, anonymous and painless survey that takes just 3 minutes to fill in.
At the end of September, we’ll analyze it and share all the insights in this newsletter. It won’t be locked behind any form or paywall, it will be free and open to read!
If you’re working at (or run) an agency, feel free to fill it in with stats from each of your relevant clients.
Give us 3 minutes of your time so we can give you awesome insights.
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!
How one simple image can drive revenue
Andrew Faris just dropped some great insights on Twitter, explaining how a simple image ad can sometimes outperform more complex ones. His thread is referring to Facebook, but it can be applied to most aspects of visual marketing.
His insights are based on an image ad that’s crushing it in one of his campaigns, beating out a $600K, 2X ROAS video ad to do so. Here are the key points:
- Running ads with a simple, well-crafted image can help qualify your clicks. Advertising with a straight-up photo of your product rather than a fancy video can help make sure the people clicking on your ad are legitimately interested in your product!
- If aesthetics matter as a value proposition, lean into them with your ads. The photo ad that’s working well for Andrew is for a leather goods brand, and clean aesthetics are one of their main value propositions. If this applies to your brand, don’t skimp on great photography, videography, and editing!
Ready to apply some of these tactics to your campaigns? Facebook announced a couple of updates yesterday that should help out with that:
- If you’re just running Instagram ads, you don’t need to connect to a Facebook ad account. It was announced weeks ago – and now Facebook is slowly rolling out the feature that will allow you to run Instagram ads without connecting to a Facebook account.
- You can also use existing story posts as story placement ads. Cory Dobbin shared this on Twitter yesterday, and though you can’t use existing stories that have emojis, GIFs, or stickers, it’s still a welcome update.
We’re heading into an uncertain Q4, but it’s not all doom and gloom. When you’re prepping ad campaigns in the coming months, keep these tips in mind.
SPONSORED BY THE CREW
We saved you a spot…
…but only if you’re ready to put your product in front of the 16k marketers who get this newsletter every single weekday.
It’s true – and the whole process is hassle-free, from start to finish. Want your product to take over this spot in the newsletter? Here’s how it works:
- We’ll do the copywriting for you in the same style we write the rest of the newsletter (and the style you’ve seen other products advertised here).
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You might be interested in some numbers. Did we read your mind?
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Interested? Reply to this email to get more info or head over to this page where you can see more info about who reads this newsletter and some past examples.
E-COMMERCE
How do you scale a store from nothing to $850k per month?
Product-market fit.
That’s the main point of this thread shared by Richie Mashiko, reporting the lessons he learned scaling his brand Birdie Alarm to $1M in revenue.
The store was launched in November 2019 – and it’s about to hit $850K in revenue for the month of August.
Some context: Birdie Alarm is a safety alarm designed for women, and that last part is the key. Here’s where the product-market fit comes into play: There are tons of safety alarms on the market, but none are really made for women (except for Birdie Alarm, of course).
How can you get a strong product-market fit for your business? According to Richie, there are two ways:
- You can sell a product that is really unique.
- You can sell a product to a new audience. This is the case of Birdie Alarms and probably the easiest to achieve. It’s all about positioning.
So, a strong product-market fit is the foundation to get ahead in the e-commerce game. Once you’ve found your fit, there are still a few things to consider, though.
COGS, 3PL, CAC and other scary words that can make your store flourish
+ Great economics solve growth problems: If you need a 3-5x Facebook ROAS to stay in the green, you don’t have a marketing problem. You have a business problem. Get your COGS (cost of goods sold) on point.
Birdie’s COGS decreased when they started placing larger orders with their 3PL (third-party logistics).
+ Constantly project and plan your products’ demand. Forecast your sales amount and communicate with your suppliers to make sure you’re on the same page.
+ A limited number of items can reduce complexity: Birdie Alarm started with just one product in five color variants. Acquire as many customers as possible with your product, and then increase your LTV (customer lifetime value) by extending the product line afterwards.
+ Plan for infrastructure ahead of time: this includes operations, team, logistics, and partners. Make sure to plan for growth at every step of the way.
Turns out all those acronyms aren’t so scary after all.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
INSTAGRAM: As reported by Alessandro Paluzzi on Twitter, a new ‘Audio Mix’ option might be coming to Reels – possibly to mirror TikTok’s voiceover feature.
TIKTOK: Well, it’s official. TikTok is suing the U.S. government, and this official statement explains why.
MARKETING: It worked, up until the point that it didn’t. Burger King’s creative Twitch campaign has resurfaced and is receiving a barrage of backlash from streamers, who claim it unfairly took advantage of their platform.
BIG TECH: The battle between Apple and Fortnite is being waged, and big brands are taking sides like kindergartners on a playground. Notably, Microsoft’s siding with Epic, citing developer tools access.
FACEBOOK: If you’re looking to add a little zest to your Facebook Live broadcast, this video about leveraging production tools should prove useful.
BRAIN TEASER
What causes no pain or sorrow, but makes anybody weep?
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.
This game will let you live out a 6-hour flight from the comfort of your own home
What comes to your mind when you think about travel?
Lush mountain valleys in Switzerland, all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouses serving you way more food than you should eat, the bustling streets of New York City?
Or, instead: flying economy class on a cramped international flight?
No matter your answer to that question, there’s a game coming this fall, titled Airplane Mode, that will let you do just that.
And, by ‘just that’, we mean reliving the experience of a 6-hour international flight from your computer screen. Instead of beaches and delicious food, you’ll be contending with questionable Wi-Fi, frustrating passengers, and airline safety videos.
Oddly enough, Airplane Mode was announced in 2019, before the word “corona” meant anything other than a decent beer. But, in the current state of affairs, the marketing angle is great – and you’ll be able to relive your least favorite part about traveling whenever you want.