6/28/2022

Author

Marketer Milk
June 28, 2022

Hi 👋

What a world we live in.

Time's have been tough.

Laws change, the economy goes up and down, and hearts fall into despair.

When times get hard, marketing also gets hard.

While much of this newsletter goes over how to grow companies and brands, we hope you don't forget that your job as a marketer is more than just getting customers.

A marketer's job is to create hope by showing people the (right) way.

There's lot of fear-based marketing right now — preying on the vulnerable. It hurts to see.

A marketer's job is a serious one. One that can influence the masses. Make sure to influence from a place of love, not a place of fear.

This is how we, as marketers, can make the world a better place.

With that in mind, let's go over what we have in store this week:

  • Marketing news from the past week

  • [NEW] Marketer's Talk

  • A list of growth ideas

  • How to build a content roadmap

  • The SEO skills matrix

  • Ad from the past

  • Website of the week

  • Cool marketing jobs

  • And much more

🗞 In the news

🎙 Marketer's Talk

This week, we chatted with Ashley Stepien — an impressive marketing leader. Ashley has been the VP of Marketing for brands like Marketo, Pendo, Webflow, and Ramp.

We asked her some questions. Here's what she had to say:

  • Why did you choose marketing as a career path?

    • The reality is I thought I would be in sales — and that's where I started. But once I got going, I realized how much of the sales process really happens before I would even get on the phone with a prospect. That was when I realized that was the part of the sales cycle I wanted to own — turns out that's called "marketing."

  • What’s one piece of advice you would give to a young marketer?

    • Accept that you have an endless amount to learn and make learning your passion. If you think you've learned it all, you likely have some big blind spots for growth. Stop learning, you stop growing. Stop growing, you start dying.

  • What do you believe is the next big thing in marketing?

    • It's not the "next big thing" per se but I think brand is about to go through a major evolution in terms of how it shows up and what it means to companies — it's the greatest battle ground for B2B companies since product. Brand permeates so many things — channels, feelings, cultures — it's basically as important as the product. Products are looking more and more alike — brands have become competitive differentiators. If companies don't lean into a brand identity — they will lose to a company that is capturing the hearts, minds, and wallets with their brand instead.

  • What’s a book you think everyone should read?

  • Which goes in the bowl first, milk or cereal?

    • How is this even a question? Whoever says milk should be punished with a lifetime ban on cereal.

📈 All things growth and product

A list of growth ideas, a guide to product-led growth benchmarks, understanding channel-model fit, and how to build a winning "team" of case study assets.

Growth ideas list

https://www.julian.capital/growth-strategy/growth-ideas/?ref=marketermilk

Your guide to PLG benchmarks

Bonus: Introducing unhinged PLG jobs!

https://kylepoyar.substack.com/p/your-guide-to-plg-benchmarks?ref=marketermilk

Get Out of the ARPU-CAC Danger Zone with Channel Model Fit — Brian Balfour

Channel Model Fit is simple - channels are determined by your model. First, what do I mean by “Model?” The two most important elements of your model are: How Your Charge - For example, free (monetized with ads), freemium, transactional, free trial, one year up front, etc.&a

https://brianbalfour.com/essays/channel-model-fit-for-user-acquisition/?ref=marketermilk

How to Build a Winning "Team" of Case Study Assets - Case Study Buddy

You may not think your case study has much to do with baseball—but you’d be wrong. Get a whole team of assets from ONE customer interview.

https://casestudybuddy.com/blog/how-to-build-a-winning-team-of-case-study-assets/?ref=marketermilk

💭 Guess the riddle

The maker doesn't want it, the buyer doesn't use it, and the user never sees it. What is it?

Answer is at the bottom of this email

✍️ Content, copy, and emails

How to build a content roadmap, how to write usefully, and the nine most important email marketing KPIs.

How to Build a Content Roadmap and Secure More Budget to Execute on It

In this in-depth post, you'll learn how to develop and execute on a strategic approach to content. Plus, learn how to present your content plan to get more budget.

https://www.howtosaas.com/blog/build-content-roadmap?ref=marketermilk

How to Write Usefully

http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html

The 9 Most Important Email Marketing KPIs | Demand Curve Blog

With new privacy updates and email trends, you might need to change the email metrics you’re tracking. Here are the top email marketing KPIs for 2022.

https://www.demandcurve.com/blog/email-marketing-kpis/?ref=marketermilk

🍭 Marketing tools and resources

A tool that helps you resize images to different sizes for social media.

Pixelhunter — 🧠 AI-powered image resizer for social media

🧠 AI-powered image resizer for social media

https://pixelhunter.io/

⚙️ SEO (search engine optimization)

The SEO skills matrix, how to measure topical authority, and a title tag test to see if freshness improves SEO.

The SEO Skills Maturity Matrix

Charting a course for SEO careers (both agency & in-house)

https://newsletter.seomba.com/p/the-seo-skills-maturity-matrix/?ref=marketermilk

How to measure topical authority

Topical Authority is still a mystical concept, partly because we don't have a good way to measure it. In this post, I want to offer a method to quantify Topic Authority.

https://www.kevin-indig.com/how-to-measure-topical-authority/?ref=marketermilk

Can improving freshness signals in titles benefit SEO?

We ran a title tag test with a customer in the listings space on their search results pages. Our customer had the current month and year in the title tag to indicate freshness, but actually updates their listings more frequently than once a month - they update them daily. We wanted to test if putting “Updated Daily” instead would improve organic traffic.

https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/case-studies/last-updated-in-title/?ref=marketermilk

🤳 Social media & branding

Making $14,000 from Pinterest in 4 months, and how to do brand activation.

$14,100 from Pinterest in 4 Months — Here’s what I’ve learned

Over $14,000 from Pinterest in the past 4 months. $12,700 up until June with another $1,400 coming later this month.

https://bettermarketing.pub/14-100-from-pinterest-in-4-months-heres-what-i-ve-learned-a7d00264a3a2?ref=marketermilk

How to do Brand Activation | AS Marketing

What are the ways to activate your brand? Learn how to do an impressive brand activation for your business in this article.

https://asmarketingagency.com/en/blog/what-is-brand-activation/?ref=marketermilk

📣 Ad from the past

Coffee ad from 1956

A coffee ad from 1956. Talk about mental imagery. This ad seems to be following a famous copywriting formula known as the AIDA framework:

  • [Attention] This coffee tells you it's fresher

  • [Interest] Fresher because it's pressure packed

  • [Desire] A remarkable new instant coffee is underneath this lid...

  • [Action] (It's missing here. But it could have said something like "Get it in the coffee section of your local grocery store.")

💻 Website of the week

Fluently helps you write fluently in any language!

Fluently — Write fluently in any language

Fluently is a distraction-free editor with a translator, multilingual grammar checker, and synonym library built-in. Improve your writing in a foreign language.

https://fluently.so/

🧠 For the mind

💼 Cool marketing jobs

Check out some cool marketing job opportunities right now:

Okay, that's it for now 💛. See you next Tuesday!

To be continued

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“All children are born artists, the problem is how to remain an artist as we grow up.”

— Pablo Picasso

Riddle answer: A coffin