8/23/2022

Welcome to another day on Earth 👋

This past week, we analyzed dozens of “Head of Marketing” job applications to get a better idea of what responsibilities this role entailed.

Some responsibilities were very broad — like, “grow brand awareness.” While others were more specific — like, “optimize Facebook ad campaigns to decrease CAC and increase LTV.”

But a few main themes popped up in almost all of the applications:

• Increase brand awareness

• Own user growth and acquisition

• Work with product teams to increase retention

We even chatted with a few Head’s of marketing to see what problems they were facing in their current roles. At early stage companies, we found that brand awareness was the main issue.

In last week's newsletter, we briefly talked about how brand affinity occurs when you say the right message to the right person at the right time. Brand is about the message — it’s how you position yourself in the market.

If you can’t get this right, there’s no point in focusing on user acquisition. This is why many companies look for product marketing expertise in their first marketing hire — positioning comes before acquisition.

Startups in their early stages must figure out what their product is, who it’s for, and how it fits into the world.

You figure this out by talking to potential (and existing) customers.

When it comes to nailing positioning, you need to answer five key questions:

1. What are your comparative alternatives?

2. What features/capabilities do you have that your competitors don't?

3. What value do you enable for your customers?

4. What type of customers really care about the value you provide?

5. What’s your frame of reference? (What context makes the value you provide very obvious to your customers?)

Without knowing the answer to these questions, your acquisition efforts will be like throwing darts on a dart board — with the lights off.

Positioning is arguably the most important thing in marketing.

If you want to learn more about positioning, we recommend checking out this article.

With that, let’s get into what we have in store this week:

• Marketing news from the past week

• Are you a vitamin, painkiller, or... drug?

• A framework for updating content

• Examples of product-led SEO

• Email onboarding teardown

• Ad from the past

• Website of the week

• Cool marketing jobs

• And much more

🗞 In the news

• What creators should know about Google's helpful content update

• More than 75% of US businesses prefer to hire freelancers in uncertain economy

• Google updates Search Console to new item classification system

• Meta launches 6 new Reels features

• Current data & martech trends every SaaS company needs to know

🚀 All things growth & product

How popular consumer apps got their first 1,000 users, how to maximize your influencer campaigns, a guide to product marketing, and are you a vitamin, painkiller, or drug?

✍️ Content & copy

Mental models for content creators, Dall-E, AI copywriting, and the future of content creation, a framework for content updates, and how to edit your work.

⚙️ SEO (search engine optimization)

5 examples of product-led SEO, how to beat your competition with "Underdog SEO," and a case study from May Core Update website penalty and recovery.

🤳 Social media, email marketing, & psychology

The most in-demand skills for social media managers, how Instagram suggests new content, finding an ideal social media content mix, and how to define your brand.

📣 Ad from the past

Using analogies in marketing can be powerful.

"Part metaphor, part simile, all argument. That is, an analogy is a type of argument or explanation that compares two items but in relation to each other as a way to explain one of the items." (source)

💻 Website of the week

🏝 Cool marketing jobs

• Head of Growth Marketing at Summer

• Influencer Marketing Manager at Athletic Greens

• Product Marketing Manager at Lang.ai

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

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." — Albert Einstein

Riddle answer: Time