Love is Blind season 7 is in full swing, and today's newsletter touches on why so many millions of people care about people they've never met.
Let's dive in ⚔️
– Neal
impact.com
New! Revealing research from senior marketing leaders staying ahead of the game, here's what they have to share:
1\. Expert tips to build a holistic marketing program
2\. Ways to eliminate common roadblocks
3\. Tips on advocating for more budget with senior leadership
4\. How to leverage a unified platform to see optimal results
About impact.com impact.com is the world’s leading partnership management platform, enabling businesses to easily create, manage, and optimize all types of partnerships to effectively acquire customers. impact.com offers a unified platform that connects brands, publishers, and communities with award-winning products including Performance, for affiliate marketing, Creator, for influencer marketing, and Advocate, a customer referral solution. Customers increasingly trust third-party validation and seek recommendations from trusted sources before making a purchase. impact.com helps brands partner with affiliates, creators, content publishers, customer advocates, other businesses and more, who meet these consumers where they are with authentic commerce content, reviews and recommendations. impact.com supports over 225,000 active and productive partnerships for more than 4,000 of the world’s leading brands including Walmart, Uber, Shopify, Lenovo, L’Oreal, Fanatics and Levi’s. Learn more at www.impact.com.
Brought to you by impact.com
Some crazy stats:
* Companies are spending 3x more on influencer marketing than five years ago.
* Companies investing in influencers + affiliates earn 46% more revenue than affiliates alone.
* 16% of ecom sales come from affiliates—an ever-increasing number.
Today, we've got some revealing research from senior marketing leaders with cutting-edge partnership programs.
Here's what they have to share:
1. How to leverage the full potential of influencers and affiliates
2. How to get the most out of UGC—which can lower CACs by 20-30%
3. How to advocate for more budget
Use conflict to make people care
Insight inspired by Harry Dry's interview on How I Write.
Most people either focus on themselves:
- Their story
- Their product’s features, benefits, etc
Or they focus purely on delivering their opinion or facts:
- This thing is good
- This thing is bad
But here’s the problem:
Everybody loves conflict
Anything without conflict is typically extremely boring.
Think about the stuff that people binge-watch:
- Dating shows like Love Is Blind and Too Hot to Handle
- Reality TV shows like Selling Sunset
- Dramas like Game of Thrones
Conflict. Conflict. Conflict.
When’s the last time someone binged a textbook with its cold, hard facts and total lack of narrative or conflict?
Conflict is inherently interesting.
As a result, it’s one of the most powerful hooks.
How to make people care to take their vitamin
Educational content is an absolute vitamin.
None of you need to be reading this right now. But you are because you know it’s good for you, and I’ve made it interesting enough to keep you engaged.
Most people fail to do that.
As Harry Dry of Marketing Examples says, many people would say something like:
“Loom’s positioning is good because they do X, Y, and Z”
Whereas Harry does it by using storytelling and conflict:
If you’re paying attention, you noticed something
This is effectively what I’ve done with this very newsletter you’re reading.
I didn’t just say:
“Conflict makes for interesting content. Here’s how to do it.”
Instead, I:
- Started with what most people do wrong
- Moved on to why it’s wrong
- Then gave an example of a better way to do it
- Pointed out that’s what I’m doing and why
- Then finished with pointers on how to do it
In short:
You have to make people care enough to do the “hard” thing that’s good for them.
Often, the hard thing is just spending time to consider your product.
People are busy, and they don’t care.
You need to make them care.
Conflict can help.
Pointers on how to use conflict
As Harry says in this great interview:
“You want pickle juice and orange juice.
The pickle juice makes the orange juice taste sweeter.
The orange juice makes the pickle juice sourer.”
The contrast of the two extremes makes both more intense.
The problem seems worse.
The solution seems better
Simple ways to introduce conflict:
- X vs Y (including before and after)
- Here’s the problem, here’s why it sucks, here’s the solution
- This is the classic PAS copywriting framework.
- Here’s how they do it. Here’s how we do it
- Tell a story of someone experiencing a problem
The next time you write copy, ensure there’s an element of conflict.
It’s the only way to make people care.
And if you liked this, you’ll love Harry Dry’s Marketing Examples.