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Article's Content
The beauty of marketing is that you can pull inspiration from all facets of life.
We’ve looked to Airbnb, NFTs, and sneaker culture for ways to improve B2B marketing. And you know what, we can learn from the beauty industry just the same.
Marketing strategies are relevant across industries because, in marketing, we aren’t placed in industry boxes. A successful marketing strategy can be easily torn down, tweaked, and applied to whatever industry you’re in.
Before we get into that, here’s a peek at what’s to come:
- Video content gets a facelift from the beauty industry
- Lead magnets, what they are and three effective techniques to create get ones
- Product marketing is out — audience marketing is in
Make Videos Pop On Social
B2B marketing doesn’t need to be boring and bland. It can be beautiful and exciting by taking inspiration from other industries’ marketing strategies.
Foundation frequently looks to B2C industries for inspiration. Recently, Ross identified marketing lessons we can take away from sneaker and NFT culture 👟.
Today we are going to look at the beauty industry.
Morning Brew connected with QuickFrame to learn how they created high-performance video content for its beauty clients. The best part is that these insights aren’t beauty industry-specific; they can and should be applied creatively across industries.
1. Start Production of Stop-Motion Videos
Probably the most underrated form of video content since Pengu went off the air in 2006.
Surprisingly, this underrated medium is one of the highest performing, driving 58% higher sales in 2020 than the year before while receiving 176% less media investment than an average video 😯.
2. Show Don’t Tell With Product-Centric Videos
It turns out show and tell isn’t just for elementary school; it’s for videos centred around the product. QuickFrame’s data revealed that videos centred around the product returned 26% more on ad spend than videos with talent strictly talking about the product.
When the video shows a person using the product, the cost per action improves by 17%. So stop telling people your product does XYZ and start showing them how it does it!
3. Testimonials Should Be Used Wisely
Like the B2B industry, the beauty industry adores testimonials and reviews. QuickFrame estimated they’ve invested 110% more in testimonial style videos than any other format, which is a significant commitment for a relatively ineffective video format from a sales perspective 😬.
Testimonial videos experience a 16% lower return on ad spend than the average video. But, they still serve a purpose in your audience’s decision-making stage; this isn’t a 🗒️ note to kibosh all testimonials, it’s a 🗒️ note to not rely on them alone for sales.
Key Takeaways
- Mix in animation and stop motion style video content to spruce up your video marketing strategy.
- When utilizing influencers and talent to promote a product, ensure they show it off in addition to talking about it.
- Testimonials have a time and place for finding success, and that place isn’t sales, so keep sales language out of them.
Eight Lead Magnets That Work
The internet is a notoriously noisy place, making it challenging to gain your audience’s attention—even more so, gain crucial lead generation information.
But how do you cut through the noise and get noticed?
You won’t need a knife; you’ll need magnets.
Much like how magnets attract each other, lead magnets use the content you provide to attract your audience and incentivize them to provide their email in exchange for a gated good.
Once you have their contact information, the retargeting can begin, and leads will turn into customers.
There are many lead magnets and different types of gated content you can release to attract your audience. For today I am going to break down three proven lead magnets for you.
1. Free Courses
A popular option, courses and webinars, are a brilliant way to connect with your audience and satisfy their craving for knowledge. There’s no need for your audience to pay for these courses; they just need to supply their contact information, and away they go.
2. eBooks
Raise your hand if you hopped on the Kindle, eBook reader trend? 🙋 Cause same, and now I hardly use it…
Though my Kindle now collects dust, eBooks remain popular. Typically accessed online from tablets and laptops, their portable format is highly appealing and being able to access expert advice on the go is enough to encourage gated downloads.
3. Comprehensive Guides
Think of comprehensive guides as virtual mentorships. Guides should be chalked full of quality information to provide your audience with all-knowing insights and direction on whatever subject you’re experienced in.
They don’t only help your readers down the right path, but comprehensive guides give you a chance to show off all that you know on a particular topic.
In our latest Lab release, Hannah Kutchinski breaks down five more lead magnets in 8 Proven Lead Magnet Ideas For B2B Brands In 2021. Go check it out 🧲!
Key Takeaways
- People love free stuff, use lead magnets to collect intel on your leads.
- You can’t just ask for contact information anymore, something must incentivize the trade.
- Lead magnets are a great way to show off your expertise through content creation.
The Right Way To Define Product Marketing
If it were possible to have everyone write down their definition of product marketing and share them with the group, we’d all have different answers. This is because there is no definitive definition of product marketing.
In true marketing fashion, it depends, because product marketing varies based on companies’ missions, industries, and company size.
The reason behind this broad variation is the lack of focus around the key point: product marketers should be well versed in who their customers are, not just what the product is.
That’s why Kramer & Kathleen of MKT1 are advocates for changing the name of product marketing to audience marketing.
The above graphic displays the focus quite well. It should begin with audience marketing and understanding before narrowing it down to product marketing and feature promotion.
An audience-first approach allows for proper, appealing messaging to be created that touches on pain points and encourages conversions, rather than pushing product features in the hopes that your audience will put the pieces together and realize they need what you’re selling.
The first rule of marketing is to know your audience.
Before engaging in anything marketing-related, you should always define and analyze your audience. Make sure to ask the following questions:
- What are your audience’s goals and problems? Are they within the range of what your product solves?
- How do competitive and complementary products meet your audience’s needs?
- How does your product fit into the audiences’ lives or workflows?
- If and how does your product meet your audience’s needs?
- What other tools is the audience using or looking for?
- Where does your audience go for information?
Once you know who you’re going after, it’ll be easier to frame your product features in a way that suits your audience’s needs and will warrant their attention.
Key Takeaways
- Know your audience.
- Market to your audience first and foremost.
- Product marketing isn’t a standalone marketing strategy; it fits into audience marketing and covers product promotion.
OTHER NEWS OF THE WEEK:
🌱 Aporia raised $5 M in seed funding for its machine learning models monitoring platform.
🎤 Andreessen Horowitz, Apple, and Alphabet led the Series B funding round for music distributor UnitedMasters, resulting in a $50M investment.
⚒️ ServiceTitan’s mobile cloud-based field management solution has gained an $8.3B valuation after the most recent Series F funding round.
BRAIN FOOD OF THE WEEK:
Unlike humans and animals, robots are battery-powered, and this fuel source requirement causes a bit of an efficiency headache.
The more energy a robot’s battery contains, the heavier it becomes, increasing the energy needed to fuel the robot. It puts them in a real Catch 22 situation. Installing solar panels has been trialled as a solution to this predicament, but it isn’t a reliable energy source for sustained travel.
That’s why James Pikul, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania’s Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, is working on the next wave of robots fueled by “eating” metal. You can check out his report here for the technical breakdown of how this robot works through the breaking and forming of chemical bonds.
TWITTER THREAD OF THE WEEK:
7 Marketing Lessons You Won’t Learn In School by Alex Garcia
WHAT WE’RE WIRED INTO THIS WEEK 🎧:
The 50 Greatest Einaudi Pieces by Dalal (Best Track: Snow Prelude No.3)
Originally sent out, by me Cali B, on Thursday, April 8, 2021.
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