🍱 One Seth to rule them all; Get your hands on; Know your KPIs

We're digging in, bring your spades

Feb 22, 2023

Hello and welcome back to The Marketing Kable, where you're joining me, Proiti, your friendly neighbourhood baby marketer, to explore mindfully curated ideas, voices and campaigns to inspire us all.

Before we begin today's journey, I want to invite you all to connect with me on LinkedIn. And no, don't worry, you won't have to put up with posts like "Here's how you are literally doing everything wrong and here is the only solution (devised by me, of course) that's going to work".

All I want is to get to know you - what you do, where you work, and most of all - what you like and dislike about The Marketing Kable.

So please, help a girl out.

Now that that's out of the way let's get started:

something to read

seth-ing it like it is. There was a time in my life when the only Seth I knew was Seth Meyers (ok, I knew Seth Rogan, too, but he doesn't count). Actor, writer and comedian Seth Meyers was my favourite Late Night host (I can barely stand the Jimmys; Colbert is fine) and, consequently, my favourite Seth.

But ever since I got into marketing, Meyers is facing tough competition from another Seth- Seth Godin.

Entrepreneur, teacher and best-selling author Seth Godin is a marketing genius. Seth's ideas have empowered marketers the world over, and today we're going to join their ranks.

Here's Seth's Blog, and we have a bunch of handpicked entries from our First Kabler, Karina, who is known to mutter WWSD at least once a day.

Permission Marketing. This is the Age of Consent, and the Age of Content, too, so make sure you have the consent of whomever you're approaching with your content (sorry for this ridiculous wordplay, but I just had to).

Marketing to someone is a privilege, not a right (tell that to the banking agents who keep calling to ask me if I want a home loan. For the last time, NO, I DON'T).

Everyone is better than you are… In the immortal words of Hannah Montana, "Nobody's perfect, we're living to learn it." There are things you can do that others can't, and vice versa. So meet each other in the middle, and you'll have the best of both worlds (see what I did there? IFYKYK).

Why we don’t have nice things. In this one, Seth makes a point I hadn't really considered before - when someone makes a truly great product or crafts a truly valuable service; it's also up to customers to step up and "consume it with the same care it was created". While marketers are responsible for what they're advertising, as people who buy, we need to put our money where our mouths are and be the wind beneath their wings.

something to watch

goo goo ga ga. I'm not particularly fond of kids. They shout, cry, throw tantrums, and want to be the centre of attention 95% of the time (ok, fine, this sounds like me when I'm PMSing).

But babies. I. LOVE. BABIES. (Except when they aren't wailing, peeing, pooping, or being generally difficult to handle). They look so cute when they smile, make sounds or waddle - oblivious to the dumpster fire of a world they've arrived in.

This Adidas ad uses toddlers in the best possible way. We're greeted with a collage of footage depicting toddlers failing at various activities: "can't sit, can't stand, can't walk the walk, can't talk the talk... can't deal".

We're reminded of how we were born, the "original impossible", and how we spend the rest of our lives proving "nothing is". It's inspiring, and it will warm the cockles of your heart.

Here's what I learnt from this video:

Make people feel good: The feel-good factor is high in this one. At the end of this ad, you'll feel happy, reflecting on all the things you have done that you never thought you could do. Adidas's "Impossible is nothing" tagline will feel like resounding truth.

And there's nothing more lucrative for a brand than to associate itself with such a positive feeling in the customer's mind.

Your voiceover has to match your copy: One of the highlights of this ad is its voiceover, delivered in a lightly mocking Southern twang that automatically amuses you with its uniqueness. And it matches the tone of the copy brilliantly.

Tap into universal emotions: Love for babies, inspiring speeches - these things resonate with everyone. And using them cleverly elevates the ad, making it memorable with tons of re-watch value.

something to listen to

can't keep my hands to myself. My handwriting sucks. 10 years ago, it was semi-decent. And then, with phones and computers conquering everything, the need to write by hand has dwindled away.

Now, the only time I write with my hands is usually when I'm signing something (wonder what ten-year-old me, forced to stay back in school to fix my ugly handwriting, would have thought about that).

Occasionally, I try to journal, but consistency and I are like India and secularism - we aspire to be united but just can't seem to manage it.

Anyway, back to today's listening recco. I've got a TED talk that got me thinking about what I do with my hands and how changing it up can have significant benefits. If this sounds confusing, let me give you the gist:

In her TED talk, experimental physicist Nadya Mason highlights the increasing disconnect between humans and the technology they use every day, making us feel helpless and empty.

Mason believes that by performing more hands-on experiments with technology, we can reconnect and rehumanize our relationship with it. She demonstrates a simple experiment she did to understand how a touchscreen works and highlights that hands-on learning has been shown to improve understanding and retention while promoting well-being.

Mason shares her own personal journey of disconnection and how it wasn't until she studied basic physics in college that she had a revelation of the physical world, leading her to gain a different sense of how the world worked and her place in it.

It's a short but enlightening talk, and it has motivated me (someone who spends 90 per cent of the day in various static positions) to tentatively sign up for a pottery class.

something to inspire

we're all human at heart. Putting a human face on products has long been a reliable strategy, especially for brands whose workings consumers might not immediately understand. Sanofi's Vaccine Stories is one such attempt, highlighting authentic experiences shared by real people whose lives were enriched by their vaccines.

Here's what I found inspiring:

Simple storytelling: No fancy gimmicks or party tricks. Just human stories told simply.
Minimalist layout: The interface is neat and clear and keeps the focus on the story. The white background seals the 'sanitised' look, which is always a great association for a pharma brand to create.
Diversity: This one is pretty self-explanatory - having a diverse range of stories from a diverse set of people appeals to a larger group of people. Relatability wins hearts.

something to learn

keep your KPIs in your pocket. This week we have another solid recommendation from resident digital maven Harsha. He recommends Scoro's comprehensive guide to digital marketing KPIs that every business should track. I won't lie to you; it's a long read. But it's worth every second. I've got some of the highlights for you:

A measurable value used by marketers to evaluate success across all marketing channels is known as a Marketing KPI (Key Performance Indicator). Common Marketing KPIs include metrics such as Cost Per Lead (CPL), Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), and Website Visits Per Marketing Channel.
There are five main categories of Marketing KPIs, which include lead generation, website and traffic metrics, SEO optimization, paid advertising, and social media tracking.

How do you measure lead generation?

Lead generation includes monthly new leads/prospects, qualified leads per month, cost-per-lead generated, cost per conversion, the average time of conversion, retention rate, attrition rate, and net promoter score.

Businesses can use various strategies to improve these KPIs, such as increasing the budget for ad campaigns, creating highly targeted campaigns, providing excellent user experience and product/packaging design, and more.

By monitoring these KPIs, companies can gain insights into the effectiveness of their marketing strategies and adjust their approach accordingly.

How do you monitor website traffic?

To monitor and improve website traffic, businesses should track metrics such as monthly website traffic, returning vs new visitors, visits per channel, average time on page, website conversion rate, the conversion rate for call-to-action content, the click-through rate on web pages, and pages per visit.

These metrics can be measured using Google Analytics and heat mapping tools. To improve these metrics, businesses can focus on creating SEO-optimized content, providing helpful information on their website, creating compelling ads and value propositions, and making their website easily navigable with clear calls to action.

How do you use SEO to serve your best interests?

SEO metrics measure the performance of a website's search engine optimization efforts.

Some of the key metrics are inbound links to a website, traffic from organic search, new leads from organic search, conversions from organic search, page authority, Google PageRank, keywords in the top 10 SERP, rank increase of target keywords, conversion rate per keyword, number of unique keywords that drive traffic, and volume of traffic from video content.

To improve these metrics, one should establish their brand as an industry expert, create an SEO strategy, publish quality content, get inbound links from different domains, interlink to pages on the website, fix broken links, create video content, and complement old content with links to new pages.

That's it for this edition of The Marketing Kable. If you received this newsletter as a forward, do consider signing up. It's forever free and just for you.

A guest post by

Proiti

in the long run