A new series of commercials created for the United Arab Emirates, entitled 'Don't Worry, You Can Afford It', puts pets and the havoc they create squarely in the spotlight, showing various IKEA products, including planters, mugs, cushions, and vases, being knocked over by adorable cats and dogs.

The traditional “surprise and delight” approach to influencer gifting is losing popularity as creators express discontent with wasteful and unprompted packages. Brands are advised against cold mass gifting. Personalization, social listening, and thoughtful communication are becoming crucial to forming strategic relationships. Reducing the quantity of products sent can also create exclusivity and enhance brand buzz.

Research suggests that rhyming phrases are easier to process. Rhyming makes phrases more memorable and even perceived as more accurate. Brands can use rhyming to make messages stand out and be remembered. For example, Heinz used the slogan ‘Beanz meanz Heinz’ to position its brand as the go-to. Gillette is known for ‘Gillette — the best a man can get’, as well as its seasonal website copy like ‘Valentine’s hits that won’t give you the nicks’. Innocent Smoothies remixed ‘easy peasy lemon squeezy’ to highlight the brand in its ads.

Gen Z is reshaping the customer journey. They’re departing from the linear funnel to embrace a continuous loop of inspiration, exploration, community, and loyalty. Gen Z is no longer trusting first-touch discovery executed directly by brands. Brands need to rely more on creators for discovery and ensure their top-of-funnel marketing is less sales and more engagement.

Rather than sponsoring the pricey conferences, the 42 Agency rented limousine buses to shuttle conference attendees and drove trucks with billboards. This post contains 3 guerilla tactics to use at your next conference.

This report from TikTok provides insights into how women use the platform and discusses how to integrate these insights into effective marketing strategies. It focuses on user sentiment, ad effectiveness, and creativity. The report also explores themes such as women's storytelling across generations, the platform's impact on self-discovery, and changing definitions of authenticity.

The introduction of a 0.3% spam complaint threshold may present an obstacle for B2B marketers. Industries such as B2B software and sales and marketing services already face spam complaint rates well beyond this threshold, ranging from 2.01% to 3.2%.

As AI-powered chat programs like ChatGPT and others become prominent, marketers need to prepare for negative brand mentions in search queries. Tracking how large language models perceive brands and measuring "share of model" will become crucial. Marketers will need to optimize content to align with model preferences and establish metrics comparable to traditional marketing indicators.

This article breaks down how the co-founders of StageTimer.io, a remote-controlled countdown timer app, monetized a simple timer app. It stresses the importance of challenging assumptions about customer needs and pricing strategies, such as using personalized approaches like event-based pricing. Reddit was an invaluable testing ground for capturing new users and supplementing SEO efforts.

PMMs should invest a minimum of 20% of their time researching to gain insights on strategy, messaging, and GTM. This post contains a matrix of 4 different types of research and tactics: customer research, competitive research, market research, and pricing research.

Animations can elevate story-telling in sales decks, emails, and landing pages. Figma uses product hero animations to convey its product value and differentiation faster. Mutiny enhances its case study page with subtle movement upon hover. Mailchimp uses animation to create micro-interactions with users’ product experiences (eg. an animated high-five after users send emails).

iFLY, an indoor skydiving brand, increased sales by removing a section of its birthday parties page. Using a scrollmap, the team found that many users never scrolled past the page header or saw the key birthday content. The content that was visible lacked descriptive details and clear benefits of the service. The brand tested removing a CTA section, which made the service details section visible above the fold. This resulted in a 36% increase in conversions and a 47% increase in revenue per customer.

Boosted posts serve as a convenient entry point into advertising, offering straightforward promotion of organic content with minimal effort. On the other hand, social ads deliver extensive customization features and precise targeting capabilities, allowing marketers to fine-tune their campaigns for maximum impact. This article shares tips on when to use each to maximize marketing effectiveness.

Brands such as Reformation, Skims, and Osea Malibu have been capitalizing on iconic figures and aesthetics from the ‘90s. Campaigns featuring celebrities like Monica Lewinsky and Pamela Anderson reflect a genuine consumer enthusiasm for ‘90s culture. A throwback campaign can serve as an opportunity for a brand to not only embrace nostalgic aesthetics but also reshape cultural narratives that align with current events.

This report surveyed over 2,300 US consumers to look at the impact of Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin, AAPI, and LGBTQIA+ consumers’ brand perceptions and purchase behaviors, with a focus on Gen Z. 81% of Gen Z said that diverse voices have either some or a large amount of influence on them when making decisions. 57% of all consumers say that multicultural people have a big influence on their brand preferences and choices. Brands should prioritize outreach to multicultural and diverse consumers as opposed to adopting a siloed approach.

Optimizing your cancellation flow can reduce user churn. Brands should first collect the various reasons why users cancel, either through user interviews or by using an open-ended question in the cancellation flow. Next, insert a multiple-choice survey into the cancellation flow based on the initial research. Finally, set up the flow to provide a win-back offer back on the multiple-choice selection.

The goal of a website CTA is to lead audiences to take desirable actions. Not attaching outcomes or pain points to CTAs will result in poor performance. Using CTAs to lead users away from the website or to unimportant pages will result in unwanted conversions. Showing more than 2 CTAs can overwhelm users and distract them from the desired action.

Sherpany, a meeting management platform, found in user research that its target audience saw the product as “just another meeting solution.” To better communicate its unique value proposition, the company repurposed some of its expert content into a Digital Transformation strategy guide and offered it as a lead magnet. Sherpany used this to test a completely new lead funnel, which resulted in a 58% increase in platform demo requests.

JPMorgan Chase has launched a business that will help marketers target customers based on their spending habits. With Chase Media Solutions, brands share what their motivations are — acquiring new customers or building basket size, for instance — and then the bank targets customers with specialized deals through its app’s Chase Offers section. These offers were previously less targeted ads, but moving forward it will be populated by offers developed within the bank’s new marketing arm.

Most marketing today works by grabbing attention, making you emotional, and turning emotion into action. For this to work, your audience has to trust, like, and relate to you – which is where humor comes into play. One tactic is to make fun of yourself, as IKEA did with a playfully misassembled ad. You can also make extreme and humorous analogies to show how your customer’s life would look without your product. Alternatively, brands can take a bold stance against something in their industry they don’t agree with, as Verizon did with its “one size does not fit all” messaging.

This article walks through a weekly marketing dashboard template used by the head of marketing at Segment used this template for a weekly report to the C-suite and sales team and explains how marketing leaders can share the right level of detail with executives. The format puts numbers into context while also using language and metrics that other teams care about. A link to download the template is included in the article.

Researching shoppers’ questions can help brands better understand consumer demand and pain points, as well as the generative AI and conversational searches online. This post walks through 5 tools that can be used to research keyword-focused questions: Moz, Semrush, AlsoAsked, BuzzSumo, and Answer The Public. All five are paid tools but offer a free trial.

Kieran Flanagan, CMO of Zapier, shares the 10 current rules of marketing. He emphasizes the importance of picking the right channels for your products, as channels will never bend to fit with products. Today’s marketing channels favor individuals vs. brands. Creators likely will take 15-20% of what Series D and public companies spend on paid advertising today.

The marketing industry is grappling with the rise of "made for advertising" (MFA) websites, which lure visitors in with clickbait headlines and then inundate them with ads. Despite industry warnings and efforts to block MFA sites, they continue to prevail, underscoring the challenges of defining and mitigating such platforms' impact. Marketers must weigh the risks of poor user experience and inflated ad costs against the potential benefits of wide-reaching ad placements.

This piece dissects loyalty into neurobiological principles and behavioral elements, offering a deeper understanding of consumer decision-making processes. Loyalty tactics include validating customers' choices, building familiarity, and gamifying and personalizing reward programs.

Gamification encourages customers to engage with an ad or site, and can also increase the likelihood that they'll recall a particular product or service when they need it next. It's also an effective strategy for collecting first-party data. This article walks through 10 types of gamification to use in campaigns, including puzzles, virtual badges, and leaderboards.

Enhancing the searchability of your emails is crucial for optimizing the customer experience and ensuring that important information is easily accessible. There are multiple strategies that can be used, including adding alt text to images, using live text for critical content, and using consistent keywords throughout your emails.

Neuromarketing merges neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, and marketing to understand and influence consumer behavior. This article describes how to apply neuromarketing to your copywriting and other marketing activities to improve engagement and conversion. The techniques include creating a common enemy, incorporating genuine flattery, and creating urgency through limited availability tactics.

This article offers a roundup of 14 company blogs to serve as inspiration. From niche segmentation and employee contributions to authentic storytelling and actionable tips, the blogs adopt different approaches to keep customers engaged. Examples include IKEA Ideas that share advice with subtle product suggestions, Home Depot's DIY Projects, and Fiverr Guides that offer simple how-tos targeting SMBs.

This article presents CRO case studies that offer insights for marketers. From enhancing in-store sales through digital marketing to maximizing ad spend with creative landing pages, each case study highlights innovative approaches and techniques to improve conversion rates and drive business growth.