June 7, 2024

This Week's Top Marketing News

Image of woman holding her index finger up to her mouth to make a motion to be quiet.

Hacking the Human Mind With Applied Behavioral Marketing

Your customer has the attention span of a goldfish, or less if your customer base also includes Gen Z. How can you cut through the noise?

Behavioral Science.

By understanding the fundamental drivers of human decision-making and behavior, brands can craft marketing campaigns that work with, rather than against, human nature.

How to Apply Behavioral Science to Your Marketing

Make Your Brand Memorable

Translate Abstract Benefits Into Concrete Language - look for ways to translate abstract product benefits into vivid, visualizable language.
Stand Out by Defying Category Conventions - marketers should scrutinize their category's advertising and identify the common elements ripe for creative disruption

Build Trust Through Counterintuitive Tactics

Boost Believability Through Specificity - Concrete numbers lend marketing messages a clinical, scientific air that can substantially boost credibility.
Disarm Consumers by Admitting Flaws - boost credibility by strategically pointing out a weakness or drawback of your product.

Fish Food:
By aligning your marketing with established psychological principles, you can leverage behavioral science to boost the impact and effectiveness of your marketing efforts - reaching into and learning the minds of your customers and changing the way they look at your business.

Google’s Second Massive Leak in a Week Shows It Collected Sensitive Data From Users
The massive leak showed that a Google audio feature accidentally recorded the voices of children, that Google Street View was transcribing and storing cars’ license plates, and that Google-owned Waze was leaking the home addresses of users. Should we be concerned about this? Probably. Will we continue to use Google no matter what devious acts they uncover blindly... Unfortunately.

The State of Consumer Trends in 2024 [Data from 700+ Consumers]
Consumer trends are changing all the time, reflecting the “never-sleeping” nature of markets and society. From the rise of AI to the growing popularity of shopping on social media, heightened data privacy concerns, and consumers tightening budgets due to recession fears, times are changing fast. Find out what trends they’re following, how they spend their time online, how and where they prefer to shop, and what standards they’re holding their favorite brands to.

Google Won't Index Sites That Do Not Work On Mobile Devices After July 5
We thought Google’s mobile-first indexing initiative, which started in 2016, was completed last October. But it won’t be fully done until after July 5. “The small set of sites we’ve still been crawling with desktop Googlebot will be crawled with mobile Googlebot after July 5, 2024,” John Mueller from Google wrote on the Google blog. “The largest part of the web is already being crawled like this, and there is no change in crawling for these sites.” However, “after July 5, 2024, we’ll crawl and index these sites with only Googlebot Smartphone.”

Image of a hand interacting with Google's homepage on a tablet.

How To Create Headlines: A 7-Point Checklist

After you’ve got a fantastic, well-written article for your blog - how do you get people to come and read your incredible piece of content?

A killer headline.

A headline can make or break your article. It can hook your readers and keep them looking for what’s inside your article. That’s why the clickbait-y headlines do so well on social. You can’t help but click it.

But how can you translate the clickbait nature into a professional well-thought-out headline?

Here are 7 tips to create your next irresistible headline.

Identify your brand’s purpose(s)
Detail the audience for the piece
Know why someone would consume the content
Keep it accurate
Pack a punch
Use your voice
Go before a sounding board

Fish Food:
Sometimes, the headline can take longer to polish up than your content. Since the headline will hook your reader into wanting to read about your content - that’s probably fair. Keep your headlines accurate, concise, and specific to get to the specific customer you want for your business.

Interactive Content: Quizzes, Games, and Polls [Examples]
Interactive content saw 52.6% more engagement than static content, according to an analysis of content engagement data by Mediafly. It also found that buyers, on average, spent 53% more time on interactive content (13 minutes) than static content (8.5 minutes). But, only 14% of marketers surveyed by HubSpot said they want to try interactive polls and games in 2024. Ready to make your readers and potential customers work more? Filled with real-life examples - it’s time to start to gamify pieces of your content. You don’t need to say goodbye to static content in your marketing mix, but you should begin brainstorming how to turn visitors into active content participants.

This Infographic Reveals The Highest-Paid Instagram Celeb In Every State
Color me surprised that it wasn’t the Kardashians, although 3 are in the top 5. I think we were all pleasantly surprised by #1, who made $28 million for just 26 posts. Never discount a little hard work.

How To Measure the Value of Your Audience (in Real Money)

Audience building is one of the hottest topics in marketing today. Explore the importance of building “addressable audiences” — groups that have permitted you to deliver content directly to them without relying on social media algorithms.

Learn how to measure the value of these audiences beyond mere numbers, emphasizing the financial worth and business impact of engaged subscribers.

Key Points:

Definition: An addressable audience consists of individuals who have requested and consented to receive your content directly.
Audience Value: Simply counting subscribers doesn't capture the full value. Instead, consider the financial worth of engaged audience members over time.

Types of Audiences:

Anticipated Audience: The ideal group your content aims to reach.
Actual Audience: Those who engage with your content.
Addressable Audience: Identifiable subscribers.

Fish Food:
Everyone is working to build trust, generate valuable data to optimize business performance and monetize audience relationships (in ways that go beyond selling more products). Segmenting audiences into asset, modeled, audited, and targeted categories can help you assign value and guide content strategies. The article gives a real-world example of a company where Robert Rose worked and how they assign their categories and values. This can help you understand how much your audience is worth to your business and how to segment your audience better to help you invest more resources appropriately.