TLDR Marketing 2024-04-01

Advertisers have filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta, alleging the company inflated ad viewership figures by up to 400%. They claim to have been unfairly charged inflated premiums for ad placements on Facebook and Instagram.

Food prices in the US rose a record-breaking 20% from January 2021 to January 2024. This has contributed to budget-conscious diners cutting back. Instead of across-the-board menu slashes and broad discounts, chains are limiting them to specific meal times or channels. Wendy’s introduced a limited-time $1 burger available exclusively via its app. Domino’s halved the minimum purchase price to get points in its loyalty program.

‘Zero’ has become a popular marketing slogan. Think “zero sugar”, “zero emissions”, or “zero landfill”. Zero-based marketing focuses on what products lack rather than their attributes, exploiting societal guilt over past consumption habits. This trend leverages consumer guilt to drive sales and promote eco-conscious purchasing behaviors.

KitKat's strategy is to make its product synonymous with having a break. The brand has done so with billboards, targeting specific search keywords like ‘I hate Mondays’ and placing public benches shaped like KitKat bars. Other brands can use this method by pinpointing the exact moment in a customer's day when its product or service is most relevant. From there, it’s a matter of creating a moment-prompting slogan and putting the product in those everyday places to make it easy for people to choose it when that moment strikes.

Reading patterns are a user experience concept that can create more helpful content for readers. The F Pattern describes how users read opening lines and skim the rest of the content. Using subheadings and images will attract their eyes. The Layer Cake describes when users focus mainly on the headings to understand the structure. It’s important to build in headings and subheadings. Some users skim the content looking for particular keywords — adding important keywords in strategic places will keep them reading.

Site navigation has a pivotal role in enhancing visibility and engagement. Robust navigation not only aids readers in exploring a publication's content but also assists search engines in comprehending its topical focus and depth of coverage. To build great navigation, identify the most important landing pages of your site. Order these pages from most to least important. Then experiment with adding a sub-navigation that pulls in tag pages for important topics or other links. This piece covers good navigation examples from The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post.

Instagram is developing a new "Blend" feature that will curate personalized Reels feeds for users and their friends. It’s designed to make it possible for users to discover new Reels together. It will enhance collaborative content discovery and offer a competitive edge against platforms like TikTok. The feature is an internal prototype and has not been tested externally yet.

This case study showcases the power of broad targeting strategies such as Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns and Advantage+ Audience in advertising. Despite the absence of demographic controls, the algorithm efficiently directs impressions towards the target audience based on conversion history. In this case, the company serving women predominantly experienced a high percentage of impressions reaching their intended demographic.

Rather than following the typical retail electronics strategy, Apple pulled inspiration from museums and luxury brands to create the Apple Store concept. This presented its products as simple and premium, resulting in $1 billion in sales within 3 years. Cross-industry innovation is a problem-solving method to come up with unique ideas by using what’s been done in other industries. To do this effectively, clarify the exact problem you need to solve. This helps identify the right inspiration from other industries.

Brands like Duolingo, Osea Malibu, and Truff are strategizing to transition to alternative short-form video platforms. They are investing in Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts as contingency plans to continue engaging with their audience. Despite having alternatives, not all TikTok content would transfer well, requiring adapting content and format. Use your current customers and fans as the North Star in terms of platform of choice and content.

A breakdown of Ritual’s stress relief supplement landing page. The brand focuses on using clear product shots, benefits of value propositions, and an above-the-fold sticky CTA button.

This curated course list includes Novum’s “How to Break Into Competitive SEO Niches”, Simplilearn’s “Advanced SEO Program”, Semrush’s “Content-Led SEO with Brian Dean”, and more.

This post contains 11 print ads by Porsche that excel at copywriting, ad design, and branding.