Two insightful books I've recently read bring fresh perspectives to the age-old debate: "features or marketing" (@dagorenouf 🫣😁) , or can a great product succeed without strong marketing? "𝐂𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐞" by @michaelpollan seemingly illustrates how product adoption can surge with minimal marketing effort. Coffee, introduced to Europe in 1640, quickly dominated Italy, France, and England without the help of advertising (no Google ads whatsoever! 😉 ). But, as Pollan suggests, coffee's success in the 17th century wasn't just about the product. Before coffee, Europeans, including children, were drunk 24/7, drinking wine as a safer alternative to contaminated water. Coffee offered a groundbreaking solution with its requirement for boiling water, making it a safer drink and transforming coffee houses into hubs for sober, intellectual discourse. Thus, its success was not just due to product. It was about right time and right place — the two 2Rs of Marketing. "𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫" by @morganhousel also delves into how timing and context can turn a great idea or product into a failure. As in proverbial "you can't make a baby in 1 month by getting 9 women pregnant": meaning not all processes can be accelerated or scaled as expected. You can't triple your marketing budget and expect to gain exactly x3 more customers. Similarly, opening 200 new stores daily (as Starbucks once did) won't increase your revenue and profits by x200. Devising a successful cold outreach campaign and simply scaling up by sending it to more people doesn't guarantee that all your problems will be solved. Contrary to common belief, most things don't scale effectively! "Same As Ever" also explores timeless truths, such as that little things compound and oftentimes create stronger effects than big things; or that the most persuasive stories are the ones that resonate with our personal experience. But wait! Aren't these the basics of every effective marketing strategy?! So, is marketing paramount because its principles are timeless, whereas products continually evolve? What's your take?

TL;DR 1. analyse data 2. build a report on your signups vs customers for the last 12 months 3. see if you can access relevant attribution data 4. update your personas and make your marketing efforts moe targeted. Let me know, if you have questions 😊

— choose topics for your blog posts and landing pages that correlate with your product positioning — find podcasts to sponsor or pitch yourself as a speaker — do the same with YT channels

I personally like using @sparktoro for this Examples on how this data can be utilized for: — creating custom audience in Google Search — target your display campaigns — improve your cold outreach content relevance — made data-driven decision on your lead gen funnel content

It is something you have to check anyway. 4. 𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲. The main question to ask here: How can you make your marketing efforts more targeted to reach the right (aka most converting first touchpoint) person?

3. 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 A big headache in marketing 😬 You're in luck if you have tools to build your attribution models: @DreamdataIO or Hockey Stack, or if you're using higher tiers on @HubSpot. However, chances are high that you have access to none of those great tools.

2. 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮. I always check the following metrics: — Geography (how your website traffic map correlates with your signup map and with your customers' map). Are there any discrepancies? Why?

1. 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 "𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡". Sometimes the number of conversions we see in CRM doesn't exactly match the number of conversions in GA4. There could be multiple reasons. Choose the source you trust the most

You spend money on Google Ads, maybe social media, and work hard on SEO. You are gaining customers, but the funnel feels leaky. Are you attracting the wrong crowd? Are you using the wrong channels? Here's a quick fix guide 👇

Why do we always think that there're scores awarded for difficulty? In 2008, I was part of a project where we had to pitch a very expensive TV show to an organization with a large decision-making committee (40 people). I was invited for a very mundane reason: I was good at presentations 🙈 (no experience in sales). My bosses had a plan: we'd meet with every single decision-maker, present our project to them, and then, with some luck, make our way to a board meeting. The first person we met told us straight away, "I like the idea, but you have to talk to Mr. Thomson (𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦). He's an expert in XYZ. If he approves the idea, everyone else will be on board as well." My bosses, of course, did not believe that. It sounded too easy: you talk to one person instead of 40. So, we went through the motions, presenting to everyone. One day after my morning jog, I met "Mr. Thomson" in the coffee shop. We had not presented to him just yet, but we had been introduced at some official event. So, we said "Hello" to each other and chatted for 20 minutes or so. He politely asked what I was doing for a living, did I enjoy the location, and I, being completely unprofessional and inexperienced, just jumped into describing our project straight away. 10 minutes into the conversation, Mr. Thomson said, "This sounds like a pretty cool idea," then we chatted some more, wished each other a great day, and he left. The next day one of my bosses got a call — the committee invited us to present the project on request from Mr. Thomson. We closed the deal then. And a solution to our problem turned out to be as simple as it initially was promised. There was no need for complications, additional meetings, and 360-degree marketing efforts. Unfortunately, for some reason, most of us, especially in marketing, are reluctant to follow an easy path. Does it appear to be too good to be true? But in fact, most things that appear to be hard are very simple at their core. To stay healthy and fit, we don't need fancy diets or top-class coaches. We just need to spend more calories than we consume. To have savings, in most cases, we have to do it all the way around: spend less than we make. Or take a strictly B2B marketing/sales challenge: again, in 99% of cases, it's pretty simple. We need to focus our efforts on the right person who would be convinced that our solution is the best for them and who would have enough "juice" to push this decision through the levels. Instead, we try to create multiple lead magnets, numerous Google Ad campaigns, and thousands of blog posts to rank for certain keywords. Because, seriously, can growing a business be THAT simple?

Yay! I'm back to working from home 🤩 1.5 y in the office — and I've finally found a company that trusts people enough to let them work from where they want

What is the most valuable thing you can do in marketing? I'll start: marketing is all about content. What is the heart of marketing for you?

Saying goodbye to a company is like replanting a beautiful flower from a pot into garden soil. There's a lot of work involved in preparation, making all necessary steps to ensure a safe transition. But at the moment you drop the last handful of soil over the securely covered roots, you have to let it go. And no matter how much you trust the gardener who will take care of the flower from now on, this moment is the ultimate manifestation of your trust in the plant itself—its power, its strength, and its desire to live—and your trust in yourself—how well you did your job preparing it for this step into the unknown. Today is my last day with @aimondo_ I am utterly grateful for all the time I spent with all of you, the amazing A Team. With every single one of you who inspired me to make my "gardening job" better, smarter, and more efficient. I know the flowers I have planted will be safe in your skilled professional hands! Wishing you all the best

You've been doing marketing for many years. What still never ceases to surprise you? I'll start 👇

Prove me wrong 😂

Who needs emails when we have YouTube and TikTok? I'm very bullish on these new content formats, but here's what I know from experience: When I was running marketing for an eCommerce company, we used both emails and videos. Our videos were all about providing useful content: we created numerous clips on how to use the products we sold, their benefits, and interviews with experts. Emails, on the other hand, were mostly commercial, featuring specific products at special prices. This approach was based on our understanding that you can't sell directly through video. While video is a great way to trigger purchase intent, email is the perfect tool to convert that intent into a purchase with as little friction as possible. Here's what we did: 1) We launched a video featuring a new recipe or expert interview. 2) Two days later, we sent an email highlighting this video. 3) Then, 3-4 days after that, we sent another email with a special offer for the main product featured in the video. Why not include the offer in the first email? Well, we tested that, too of course 😅. We quickly realised that people needed time. That they are not — surprise, surprise — popcorn machines where you drop a coin in and get a bucket of hot popcorn in three minutes. No, people needed time to think and evaluate the content we offered. If they found it valuable and convincing enough, they're ready to make a purchase. Emails with special offers were the final nudge, providing a frictionless way for them to act on their intent. And my, the open, click rate and conversion rate from these emails were mind blowing (we once achieved 15% conversion in a single campaign 😎)! In February, we at @aimondo_ will run a webinar on how to do emailing right, focusing on how to increase re-purchase rates and retention using the good old written word. I'm already talking to a couple of amazing experts I know (though they have not committed yet, I keep my fingers crossed 🤞). I have two questions though: — Do you have someone in mind who you believe would be the best person to cover the topic of emailing (not cold emailing but email marketing)? Maybe I just missed some great names 🤷‍♀️Tag them here please — What aspects of emailing do you believe you're not getting quite right in your line of work? Drop a comment below, and I'll make sure to ask renowned experts to cover these topics at our webinar.

oh no! what a start of the week 😭