Welcome to the 1822 new marketers and founders who joined last week!
This week we're covering product announcements, internal linking, and customer stories.
How to acquire more customers through video
Vidico is the video production company that helps you get more customers. Companies like Airtable, Square, and Digital Ocean use Vidico to get effective videos that communicate their product’s value props.
Take a look at this campaign they ran for Cascade. Vidico took a concept that’s typically unexciting (B2B strategy software) and turned Cascade into a brand that's fun, ambitious, and bold. Oh, and the video got a 93% view rate and over 1.4 million views on Youtube.
Curious what it’ll cost to work with them? Take this short quiz to get an estimate (takes seconds and you’ll get a price range right away).
How to gather customer stories
Insight from Bell Curve.
Consumer research often focuses on opinions, not stories. That’s missing a big opportunity.
Example of research that leans into opinions, not stories:
- Asking a customer, “What’s your favorite feature of our product?”
- Instead of, “Tell me about a time when our product added value to your life.”
Customer storytelling can reveal unfiltered perspectives and add context and depth to your consumer insights. And it’s grounded in real-world usage, not hypotheticals.
A simple way to gather customer stories is through digital ethnography. That’s the practice of studying your customers in the real world—and you should be doing it regularly.
We asked Eun Suk Rafael Gi, VP of Growth at our agency Bell Curve, for tips on conducting digital ethnography. Here are three he shared.
- Join customers’ online communities: “Understand what social platforms / communities your audience participates in, and join those communities,” Raf said. “Be an active listener; better yet, be an active participant. This roleplay will allow you to spend some time in your customers’ shoes and give you a more intuitive understanding of your audience.”
- Look for patterns: Don’t just look at the words people use. Focus on the intensity of posts and comments. What do people post about most often? What do they post about most “loudly”?
- Study your own profile: Review your company’s social media accounts. Who is following and engaging with you? If followers’ profiles are public, look at what kinds of pictures, posts, and stories they’ve shared to understand what motivates them.
Get inventive with it—think through all the ways you can find, engage with, and study behavior both on- and off-line. As Raf puts it, “Your creativity and curiosity set the bounds for what you’ll uncover.”
How to write a product announcement
Insight from Jack Appleby.
“We’re pleased to announce”: the start of exactly 0% of compelling product announcements.
For a more remarkable way to announce product news, look at how Twitter does it.
That tweet is deceptively simple. A lot went into it.
Marketing Brew’s Jack Appleby asked Ashley Tyra, Twitter’s Head of Social Editorial and Voice, what their process for product tweets is. Here’s what she said:
“We open up a Google doc and start doing a free write. First, we start with the very straightforward ones—once you nail the clarity line, you can start to have fun with the rest. We probably write 20 to 50 options for ourselves, then arrange them—what are the ones floating to the top? Which ones are making us laugh? Which ones do we have that gut reaction to?”
Breaking that down into steps, which you can use anywhere you’re sharing news (like email hooks or in-app popups):
- Create a shared doc and invite your writing team to join.
- Writers add announcements that a) share clear information and b) have personality. As Appleby puts it, “While personality is important in today’s attenuated social landscape, you can’t be all hat and no cattle.”
- Arrange the top contenders. Pay attention to emotional and gut reactions—those are what make a message stick.
Having a well-defined social media voice will make this process easier. Here are some useful tips from Hootsuite on creating a social media style guide.
Strengthen internal linking with the “ICARE” framework
Insight from Terakeet via Clearscope.
Internal links can radically improve UX and overall SEO health.
Thing is, most marketers don't have a deliberate strategy in place to benefit.
Unless you have a massive website (1,000+ pages), there's no need to over-complicate it—stick to the "ICARE" framework: Intent, Context, Anchor text, Relevance, External link authority.
1. Intent: Link to pages that readers expect. For example: "Strong customer relationships lead to better brand equality."
- Right: Links to Guide to Customer Relations
- Wrong: Links to CRM Software Solution Page
Link to pages that build on intent.
2. Context: Don't match keywords; match context.
Right: Put your audience at the center of your SEO strategy
- Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy
Wrong: Byrdie's SEO strategy is built around topic clusters
- Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy
Google understands the context surrounding links. So make sure the pages you link are contextually relevant.
3. Anchor text: Use keywords.
Right: If you publish health content, you need to know what E-A-T is.
- Links to What is E-A-T & Why it's Important
Wrong: If you publish health content, you need to know what E-A-T is.
- Links to What is E-A-T & Why it's Important
The former satisfies intent, context, and targets a great keyword. The latter satisfies none of those things.
4. Relevance: Add links where they're relevant.
Ideally, links are related to the main topic of the page. In a section on internal linking, you'd want to link to pages about internal linking.
5. External link authority: Link from high authority pages.
Lastly, if you can't find linking opportunities that satisfy the first four criteria, your best bet is to link out from pages with the most backlinks.
News and links
News you can use:
- Facebook and Instagram advertisers, look out for updates to call ads. Meta is testing a few new features, like giving customers the ability to request a callback via Messenger.
- Google is upgrading its shopping experience with nine new features and tools, including 3D visuals, personalized results, and dynamic shopping filters. Just in time for the holidays—check these out to stay ahead of the competition.
- Time to consider Twitter another platform for repurposing video content. The app recently introduced a full-screen viewing mode, plus a video carousel in the Explore tab.
- Lots of updates from LinkedIn. For LinkedIn Ads, look out for a long-form “document” ad format, offline conversion tracking, and detailed audience insights. And for LinkedIn Pages, you can now build your brand more easily using post templates, clickable links, and pinned comments.
Event we're eyeing: SparkTogether virtual summit on November 10th.
SparkToro is a running our type of growth event—a day of honest stories about marketing, growth, and company building. Early bird pricing ($100 off) ends on Friday, October 7th. Check it out here.
*sponsored
Something fun
From @puzzl_app
