- Marketer Milk
- Posts
- The first marketing skill
The first marketing skill
“We’re not going there again. You could tell the food wasn’t made with love,” Deepak said.
“Yeah, it wasn’t great,” I replied as I sat on my moped and put my helmet on.
It was 2021, and I was living the digital nomad life in Mexico with my friend Deepak.
We would regularly go out for dinner after working all day. And one night, for the first time, I heard someone refer to food as being “made with love.”
"Wasn’t made with love? Like they didn’t make love to the food?! What does that even mean?” I thought to myself as I rode back home.
I came to realize that it meant care was not put into it.
The person who made the food didn’t care about how it would be received by the person eating it. Profit over quality.
And over time, I realized this idea didn’t just apply to food — it applied to everything.
From your ability to land a job to your ability to attract a partner, care is the foundation of it all.
And I’ve noticed, especially in professional fields, that most people simply don’t care enough.
This past week, I was in San Francisco getting lunch with a founder. He told me how they had worked with agencies and freelancers in the past but that “they kinda sucked. They didn’t really care.”
I nodded.
“A lot of people at work don’t have the mental or physical capacity to care enough,” I replied.
They work jobs they’re not excited about, for bosses they don’t like, at companies they couldn’t care less about.
Why should they care? How could they even have the emotional capacity to? Heck, some of those companies don’t even care about them!
But this is what sets everything apart.
Care is the foundation of all the great work that you will do.
In the last edition, I asked what everyone was struggling with the most (I only gave 2 options, on purpose):
It was close, but getting more traffic came out on top.
This tells me that attention is what most marketers need (or value) the most.
And I won’t be the first to tell you this, but the art of getting (quality) attention starts with care.
Using ChatGPT to spin out a bunch of AI-generated content in hopes of driving more SEO traffic is not care.
Care (love) means putting someone else’s needs first — not because it benefits you, but because it benefits them.
In a marketing sense, it means caring more about improving someone’s life than about your business outcome.
Help someone feel better about their life.
This is where your mindset needs to be as a great marketer.
So, how do you do this?
If you’re creating educational content, make people feel smarter.
If you’re trying to connect with someone, show them you understand their problem, that they’re not alone, and that you found a solution that will work for them.
Marketers who master this don’t struggle with conversions. And, funny enough, they often don’t struggle with traffic either.
It’s the marketers who don’t internalize this that struggle the most.
They focus on hacks, churn out soulless content, and chase algorithms — never stopping to ask if they’re actually helping anyone.
But the ones who care?
They build brands. They create things that resonate and go viral. They don’t need to game the system because people naturally gravitate toward them.
Give care to get care.
Because just like food, people can tell when something isn’t made with love.
So if you want more traffic, more conversions, or more engagement, start by asking yourself:
Do I actually care about the person I’m trying to reach?
Because when you do, the dynamics of your marketing changes.
But caring is just the foundation. Next, you need a strategy.
In the next edition, I’ll break down how to think about your traffic channel acquisition strategy — with care at the center.
With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):
Marketing news from the past week
50 simple CTAs that convert
The perfect welcome email
The dangers of programmatic SEO
Top performing influencer content
Ad in the wild
Website of the week
Cool marketing jobs
And much more
🗞 In the news
🚀 All things growth & product
How DoorDash won at growth, proven sales plays for self-serve usage, 50 surprisingly simple CTAs that convert, and 10 ways to price and package AI features.
💭 Guess the riddle
What’s a marketer’s favorite drink?
Answer is at the bottom of this email
💌 Email marketing & copywriting
20 webinar invitation email examples, the perfect welcome email, and how to be memorable and create contrast in your copy.
One simple hack to boost your open rate: The “WE-PAC” welcome email.
The most important email you send to subscribers is your welcome email.
It’s your first impression.
A great first impression = better engagement (open rate and CTR) and more sales.
Your welcome email must do… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Matt McGarry (@JMatthewMcGarry)
2:03 PM • Feb 17, 2025
✍️ SEO & content marketing
ChatGPT clicks converting higher than Google SEO, SEO ROI is more than just revenue, the hidden dangers of programmatic SEO, and how write blog introductions that increase engagement.
Top performing influencer content for conversions, the brand differentiator template, and what color psychology actually is.
🧠 Productivity
The ultimate productivity hack and how to instill urgency in your team.
📣 Ad in the wild
Vercel ad I spotted in San Francisco. It’s true, it’s pretty fast.
Spotted an ad in the wild that caught your eye? Reply to this email with the ad and your @ for credit to get it featured!
💻 Website of the week
🏝 Cool marketing jobs
Okay, that's it for now 🩷. See you next Tuesday!
What did you think of this newsletter? |
“We don’t succeed or fail because of fortune or luck. We succeed because we understand the way the world works and what we have to do. We fail because others understand this better than we do.” — Viet Thanh Nguyen
Riddle answer: Brand-y.
🤳 Social media, branding, & psychology