💾 The Balancing Act

In Today's Issue

• Finding Balance in an Efficiency Economy

• The Hottest Agency Service For 2024

• Content, Content, Location

• Email Marketing Tools

• Inside Info

• Separating the Cookies from the Cream

• Adding it Up!

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”

I’m on record as a believer that delivering real value and results as quickly as possible are the keys to winning in an efficiency economy. But I was careful to point out that for many companies who need to right-size things, it’s important to make strategic marketing cuts that won’t sacrifice growth.

It turns out that the balancing act between marketing efficiency and austerity policies is on a lot of marketers’ minds right now. The folks at The Drum have explored whether CMOs can find common ground with CFOs on brand-building budgets in the coming year. It’s an important question to ask and an important conversation to have if you want to secure budget for your initiatives this year.

Even if you’re not working in B2B, the disconnect between CFOs and CMOs should pique your interest. It all comes down to the balancing act between optimizing results in the short term and laying the foundations for mid and long-term priorities. 

It’s natural to seek comfort in the clarity and immediacy of performance drivers like lead generation in times of economic instability. But when your competitors go quiet, you have an opportunity to be heard. Investing more in brand marketing during a downturn has been proven to set businesses up for bigger returns in the future.

Efficiency might be the most important strategy right now. But this too shall pass. When it does, will you be riding the crest of a wave or trying to patch holes in your boat?

The Hottest Agency Service For 2024 Is What, Now?

Did you know a $212 billion market has been disrupted so badly over the last two years that businesses are begging for help? Just look at the search trends since major tech platforms started blocking third-party cookies.

With change comes opportunity, and the smartest agencies are adding Google Ads services to their business while others get caught chasing shiny objects. That’s why we’re running a series of live workshops starting on January 18th that teaches agency owners how to add Google Ads as a service line to their business. 

If you are looking to seize a new revenue opportunity that you can implement quickly with existing clients,  join me to copy my exact blueprint for:

• What services you can offer (so you aren't guessing at what the marketplace needs)

• How to price your services and staff the projects when sold

• What exactly to put in your offer to clients (and what NOT to include)

• What projects usually sell the best when it comes to Google Ads

• How to add this new service to your existing sales process (or building a sales process if you don't already have one)

This workshop is designed for agencies and freelancers with at least five active clients who want to add a new revenue stream to their business. If that describes you, you can learn more now.

🐝 The Future of Content: Fewer Buzzwords, More Feelings

The best content should be able to do two things: tell you about the moment in which it was made, and make you feel something. Best-case scenario, it can even start important conversations or help to move the cultural needle. Lessons from the Oscar-winning digital arts platform of WeTransfer on creating meaningful content.

🎬 Entertainment SEO in the New Era - Optimizing for Top Stories and Tweet Carousels

For the entertainment and media industry, features like Top Stories and Tweet Carousels offer unique platforms for visibility. These features dominate the upper fold of the search results, making them prime real estate for capturing audience attention. Mark Huntley, a renowned SEO analyst from San Diego, shares his expert insights on how to optimize for Google’s Top Stories and Tweet Carousels effectively.

👩‍⚖️ Persuade Like a Lawyer

I know, you’re not a lawyer. But your readers are more like a jury than you might think. The hyperavailability of online content means that readers are, in effect, constantly hovering over the close tab button, ready to quit reading. Content that converts must first persuade, so content marketers would do well to learn from professional persuaders.

• Email Marketing Tools - Reddit

• How Stanley cups became the rave of the moment - Twitter

• US adds 216,000 jobs in December as stronger than expected rise caps robust year - CNBC

• The road to hell is paved with good intentions - Twitter

• Google is turning from "results-driven" to "behavior-driven" - Twitter

• The Impact of Marketing Investments - Chris Walker on LinkedIn

Marketers Eye Transaction Data in a World Without Cookies

A week ago, we led with the news that Google Chrome was phasing out third-party cookies. It was a bittersweet moment for marketers as the win for online privacy comes at the expense of third-party data we have come to rely on.

Like all of you, I was trying to process what the announcement would mean for the ways we’ve gotten used to getting things done. This led me to ask, what will the world do without cookies?

The folks at Adweek are asking the same questions as many of us. And Catherine Perloff has taken a closer look at transaction data. It’s one of the candidates that retail media is sizing up for a larger role in a post-cookie world.

Retail media firms can use their customer databases to target ads on their websites and across the internet without relying solely on cookies for closed-loop attribution. However, some worry that transaction data can never fully replace cookies because these signals aren’t identifiers. Still, transaction data may emerge as a more critical resource in a world where many signals go dark for advertisers.

There’s no one-size-fits-all model for marketing at present. So, expecting one strategy to work for every business is unrealistic as we gear up for the world after cookies. But there is one question you’ll want to answer: what plans are you making to measure and demonstrate your ability to drive conversions effectively?

• Ad of the Day: Cadbury remakes ‘Mum’s Birthday’ to mark 200th anniversary - The Drum

• This Facebook Ads Targeting Update Has Changed Everything! - YouTube

• That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles | Chrome’s Third-Party Cookie Phase Out Has Begun - Spotify

• Marketing Oppenheimer Was More Than Just an Ad Campaign - AdWeek Podcast

• The modern customer journey and the rise of data-driven marketing - Google Cloud on YouTube

• How I Would Learn Digital Marketing (If I Could Start Over) - Ahrefs on YouTube

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