🍱 Up your PPC game; Write better email; Change the world with Marketing
🍱 Up your PPC game; Write better email; Change the world with Marketing
Content is still king. Content is also the pauper.
Hello and welcome back to The Marketing Kable, where we're inspiring you with ideas, voices and campaigns we've curated just for you.
something to read
I know I risk sounding like an idealistic eighteen-year-old, but one of the hesitations I had about becoming a marketer was the fact that it seems to be a purely materialistic pursuit - to promote a product or service without making a positive impact on society or the environment.
But while journeying through this complex world, I've lately come to a realisation (do call me out if you disagree): marketing, when done well, has the extraordinary power to create, dismantle and modify the behaviour of those who buy from you - no matter what it is you are marketing.
Within our capitalistic set-up, you can be sure pretty much every human on the planet buys things. Therefore, buying behaviour determines our engagement with society and the natural environment, which means that marketing plays a very powerful role in shaping this engagement.
And that brings us to today's reading recommendation: Marketing a Better Future: A dentsu and Kantar special report on corporate sustainability in the Asia Pacific. Over 70 marketers in 12 APAC areas were polled, and one-on-one interviews with C-suite executives from top companies helped provide detailed insights.
This research will assist us marketers understand how our activities will drive growth that benefits the three Ps: people, planet, and prosperity.
You need to sign up to download and read the full report for free. Here's the highlight reel:
The Context:
Projections indicate that the Asia-Pacific is about to become the world's richest region by 2030. Consumption is increasing dramatically as a result of development and modernization.
The APAC communities are on the front lines and carry a disproportionate share of the hazards that climate change will pose to the environment, society, and the economy.
Climate change is a major worry, according to Kantar's most recent Global Issues Barometer. Nearly 60% of worldwide buyers report experiencing eco-anxiety, which is fueling growing awareness and desire for action.
The challenges:
The buyer intention-action gap: Despite a desire for change, a lack of knowledge and openness, conflicting concerns, and escalating costs impede people in Asia Pacific countries from choosing sustainable solutions in their everyday lives.
The organisational intention-action gap: While marketers frequently cite 'purpose' as their motive for making sustainability integral to their pitch, tactical and structural challenges (sales-centred KPIs, pressure to deliver short-term etc.) prevent them from taking on real sustainable leadership.
What To Do:
To bridge the buyer intention-action gap, marketers need to:
Minimise the use of jargon and decrease the effort a human needs to put in to understand how a business contributes to sustainability.
Link the proposals with the beliefs and values of those who buy from you to generate favourable connections with a brand.
Create a feeling of achievement so they continue with new behaviours.
To bridge the organisational intention-action gap, businesses need to:
Prioritise marketing in their move towards sustainability
Be transparent about their sustainability operations and ensure their measurability
Conduct in-depth buyer research to determine the extent to which sustainability initiatives and messages impact customer purchasing decisions
Decide on a finish line that is clearly stated to avoid accusations of greenwashing
Set industry-wide standards for sustainability operations
Bonus Highlight: Eight out of ten respondents said they only want to spend money with businesses that practise green and sustainable advertising in five years. It's time to decarbonise.
something to watch
When you're a kid, you think you're the main character in the world. You think it revolves around you, and by sheer force of willpower and desire, you can make it dance to your tunes. But then you grow up, and you realise you're hardly the main character of your own world, let alone the world at large.
If you can relate, this ad by Exoticca is about someone like you. It follows a man who becomes the Director of His Own Life after a near-death experience, aided by Exoticca, a travel crafting company that offers to help you create the life of your dreams.
For the past two years, the world has been working in its pyjamas. And despite all attempts to portray it to the contrary, the lines between work and life have become even more blurred.
With companies going all out to ensure "productivity" with a return to the office, this ad has a master of your fate, the captain of your soul vibe, especially since the protagonist they chose really looks like he could use a break (casting matters!).
The idea isn't new - but the execution is brilliant (look at all those boss ladies in MI-style suits!). The copy is weird and wonderful, a perfect fit for a concept like this.
The whole thing makes you want to plan a trip RIGHT. NOW.
something to listen to
The sea levels are rising - is there anybody out there who doesn't feel like they're drowning? I'm not talking about the oceans, I'm talking about the sea of content (although the oceans need our urgent attention too). Content is everywhere, and a lot of it is meh.
Hop on to LinkedIn, and you'll find every Tom, Dick and Harry spewing opinions about how to make your content stand out. But we can't just trust anybody. We've got to trust the ones that know their stuff.
Flavia Barbat, the Editor in Chief of BrandingMag, is one of those people. In this episode of the podcast series Champagne Strategy, she details her approach to content strategy, which is led by a single, all-important question: "What do you want to be known for?"
Expounding on the symbiotic relationship between brand and content, Barbat shares actionable tips on how to tell stories that capture and retain customer attention. Time to put your headphones on!
something to inspire
Remember those exercises we had to do in school? The ones that went "Write a letter to your local municipality about the increasing number of potholes in your locality", or "Write a letter to your friend about how you spend your summer vacation"?
They were teaching us to write letters, even though letters were fast losing prominence in the early 2000s and getting replaced by emails and other forms of direct communication. Maybe kids these days learn how to write emails in class - I don't know, you tell me.
As a marketer, mastering email copy and design probably isn't something you learnt in school. It's something you picked up on the job and could use a dose of inspiration from time to time.
That's why we have Really Good Emails, a reservoir of emails you can browse for ideas, phrases, formats and use cases to can borrow from. Never get stuck at "Dear _______" again.
something to learn
Today's learning resource is once again a superb recommendation from Harsha.
PPC advertising can often be confusing and seem overly complicated. PPC Hero's simple, to-the-point guides are excellent go-tos for beginners.
Take this article, for example: Beginner PPC Optimization Tips for Ecommerce Brands, or this one:
Dynamic Search Ads For Beginners. They are simple, fluid and broken down to basics for rapid understanding and long-term retention.
Get on there and up your PPC game!
That's it for this edition of The Marketing Kable.
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