🍭 Be for someone, not for everyone

Hi 👋

Sometimes someone says they want to see you again, then they ghost you.

Sometimes people say they’re okay, but they cried 3 times that morning.

Sometimes a customer churns because they said your product was too expensive, but really they just found a better alternative.

Sometimes someone emails us saying we suck, but they’ve opened 33 of our previous newsletters and have not unsubscribed yet.

Long story short: don’t listen to what people say, observe their actions.

We say this because, in the past decade, it feels like marketing has become all about customers, users, traffic numbers, click through rates, ROAS, and whatever digital metric you can think of.

Some marketers have forgotten that marketing is about understanding people.

The difficult thing is people are very complex and can be fickle. Sometimes people make a decision without even thinking about it. Sometimes it takes months for someone to make a decision.

Fake countdown timers, fear mongering, ads that start with “don’t skip this ad!”

It’s no wonder most companies we talk to say they’ve never had a great experience working with an agency.

Understanding people takes a long time. And sometimes you’re completely wrong.

This is why marketing is so hard.

But when you get it right… when you succeed at understanding someone’s needs… oh, does it feel good.

Something just clicks like magic.

And this magic happens when you focus on being for someone and not for everyone.

You know, there are a lot of similarities between relationships and marketing.

If you don't understand someone's needs based on their attachment style, you risk losing their interest.

Outside of just relationships, it's how some big companies get hit with a right hook they didn't see coming — look at Google and Microsoft in recent news.

People don't care about new search engine features. They care about finding an authentic answer to their problem.

Normally, this part of this newsletter has some sort of insightful marketing tactic. But this week it didn't feel right.

Maybe it's the whole concept of love that has made us come back to what really matters.

Next week, we'll have a great marketing insight for you.

But this week, we just want you to reflect on what it is people are truly seeking.

Sure, attribution and being able to measure stuff is important. But that's secondary.

In your marketing efforts, you need to think deeply about what your "someone" truly needs — hint: it's not another ebook.

Understand and meet peoples requirements.

Be the vehicle that gets their needs met.

And do it with pure love in your heart.

With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):

• Marketing news from the past week

• How to organize your B2B growth marketing team

• Topics vs keywords

• 6 predictions for Google Bard

• The future of marketing is people

• Ad from the past

• Website of the week

• Cool marketing jobs

• And much more

🗞 In the news

• Twitter is making millions of dollars from previously banned accounts, report says

• Breef raises $16M to match brands with marketing agencies

• Despite Q1’s slow start, publishers are bullish about events revenue for 2023

• ‘Safe, lazy, boring’: How Super Bowl LVII ads mostly fumbled

• Pinterest now up to 450 million active users

🚀 All things product & growth

How Canva got its first 1,000 users, how to organize your B2B growth marketing team, five ways to build a $100M SaaS business, and how to double the efficiency of your ads.

✍️ Content, copy, & emails

The difference between topics and keywords, five things pop stars can teach us about content marketing, and 101 email subject line ideas.

⚙️ SEO

How to group keywords, 6 search predictions for Google Bard, and a documented experience of Bing and Edge's SEO power.

🔮 Psychology, sales, & operations

Why the future of marketing is people, why you should record customer meetings, and an OKR product management guide.

🧠 Extra stuff

The Steve Jobs bias killing SaaS startups, 9 pieces of advice for early-stage startup marketers, and 7 "first principles" of marketing.

📣 Ad from the past

(Whitman's Valentine's Day ad from 1948)

💘

💻 Website of the week

🏝 Cool remote marketing jobs

• Head of Brand & Content at Earnest

• Senior Content Specialist at Alloy Automation

• Senior Product Marketing Manager at Iterable

• Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Wealthfront

• Content Writer at Trustly

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

“Trust that still, small voice that says, 'This might work and I'll try it.'" — Diane Mariechild

Riddle answer: Love