In Growth We Trust: Marketing | Growth | Startups
🔮 Meta Ads, Imposter Syndrome and Media Mix w/ Marcus Burke, Growth consultant in Berlin
Tue Jul 18 2023Description
This episode covers various topics related to marketing, LinkedIn, career transitions, imposter syndrome, social media marketing, content creation, app attribution, product analytics, channel optimization, creative testing, new ad placements, and miscellaneous discussions. The hosts analyze the significant number of listens and hours consumed by listeners, welcome a LinkedIn influencer, and share insights on optimizing marketing efforts. They also discuss the importance of utilizing first-party data, testing in the beginning, and considering new ad placements like threads on social media platforms. The episode concludes with discussions on podcast flow, timestamps, and Marcus's relaxed speaking style.
Insights
LinkedIn as a Powerful Platform
LinkedIn is a powerful platform for exposure, audience building, and utilizing that audience. It can generate leads and podcast invitations when quality posts providing valuable advice or experiment results are shared.
Imposter Syndrome in Marketing
Imposter syndrome is common among successful people, even after many years of experience. Overcoming imposter syndrome can be achieved through growth mentorship and putting oneself out there in content creation.
Optimizing for Trial Start Event
Optimizing for trial start events as a subscription app may lead to product issues. It is important to take a holistic approach to growth and consider marketing, product, and growth as a whole.
Utilizing First-Party Data
Utilizing first-party data is important for retargeting and understanding the funnel. It can provide insights into gender and age splits, and lookalike audiences can still be relevant when using first-party data.
Creative Testing Strategies
When starting creative testing, treat everything as a test until spending more than $5k per month. Test similar concepts within one ad set for iOS creative testing, and optimize for trial event plus activation event to uncover more insights.
New Ad Placements and Opportunities
Threads could become a new placement for ads on social media platforms like Twitter, providing additional reach and opportunities for advertisers. The scrollable nature of threads may unlock a significant amount of inventory.
Importance of Timestamps and Show Notes
Adding timestamps in show notes helps listeners navigate the podcast more easily. Not all marketing podcasts provide timestamps, making it less common in the industry.
Marcus's Relaxed Speaking Style
Marcus's relaxed speaking style has led to assumptions of him being stoned. However, it has also been mentioned that he has a nice voice suitable for sleep stories.
Consideration of New Ad Placements
When considering new ad placements like threads, it is important to iterate on ads and reach audiences with specific information consumption habits. Twitter ads worked well for Blinkist due to the product's fit with consuming educational content.
Podcast Flow and Miscellaneous Discussions
The podcast flow is improving with smooth segues between topics. Adding timestamps in show notes helps listeners navigate the podcast more easily. Marcus's relaxed speaking style has led to assumptions of him being stoned, and there have been comments about his voice being suitable for sleep stories.
Chapters
- Marketing and LinkedIn
- Career Transition and Imposter Syndrome
- Social Media Marketing and Content Creation
- Content Creation Strategies and App Attribution
- Product Analytics and First-Party Data
- Data Analysis and Channel Optimization
- Channel Optimization and Creative Testing
- Creative Optimization and New Ad Placements
- New Ad Placements and Conclusion
- Podcast Flow and Miscellaneous
Marketing and LinkedIn
00:10 - 08:01
- Marketing is about value and being clear on what we want to do in a noisy world.
- The podcast has achieved a top 10 ranking in Apple marketing podcasts.
- They analyze the significant number of listens and hours consumed by listeners.
- The hosts welcome Marcus, a LinkedIn influencer, who will be speaking at an event in Korea.
- Marcus shares his experience with LinkedIn and its impact on his career.
- He introduces himself as a marketer with 11 years of experience, primarily in gaming.
- Marcus started his career at Inno Games, one of Germany's largest strategy game developers.
Career Transition and Imposter Syndrome
07:46 - 14:55
- The speaker worked in marketing for seven years, starting with web gaming and then moving to mobile.
- After seven years, the speaker felt the urge to try something else and began working with Blinkist and other subscription apps.
- The speaker's last full-time job was as the lead growth marketing attendant at a language learning social network.
- The decision to go full-time consulting was influenced by the realization that the speaker had something to add in mentoring calls.
- Growth mentor has helped the speaker overcome imposter syndrome and stay relevant in the industry.
- Imposter syndrome is common among successful people, even after many years of experience.
- Putting oneself out there in content creation can be scary but rewarding once started.
Social Media Marketing and Content Creation
14:29 - 21:27
- Posting content on platforms like LinkedIn can be like a game, motivating you to improve and become more relevant.
- Engaging with others on social media can lead to unexpected connections and conversations.
- Using social media for growth marketing can be addicting, with dopamine hits from seeing numbers and analytics.
- Podcasting lacks detailed tracking and analytics compared to other forms of performance marketing.
- LinkedIn is a powerful platform for exposure, audience building, and utilizing that audience.
- The speaker has gained around 18K-19K impressions per week on LinkedIn by focusing on optimization, paid social, meta ads, app onboarding, and paywall optimization.
- Quality posts that provide valuable advice or experiment results can generate leads and podcast invitations.
- Focusing on quality rather than quantity can yield better results in terms of engagement and opportunities.
- Ideas for posts are generated by writing down hooks or questions that come up during conversations or client calls.
Content Creation Strategies and App Attribution
21:00 - 28:19
- Writing down ideas is important and can be done anytime, anywhere
- Creating a hook for content is crucial and can be learned from big creators
- Spending an hour in the morning to turn the hook into a post and engage with comments
- Finding daily posters in the niche can help improve commenting system
- D2C e-commerce folks are more likely to post daily
- Posting comments on D2C content helps learn but may not align with personal positioning
- Setting up content in advance may remove the fun of writing in the moment
- Having at least one day to prepare content would be helpful to reduce stress
- Writing ideas down in a notebook helps ideate creatively outside of work
- Using an Apple watch to record ideas without typing can be a game changer
- 'Tracking attribution scan' is a hot topic that generates engagement on posts
- 'Web2App' is another hot topic related to getting around scans
- Creative strategy beyond classic advice like static ads or UGC is interesting
- Silos between performance marketing and product create issues with app attribution scan changes
- Working closely between performance marketing and product teams helps understand process and metrics better
- Patterns emerge when understanding how different channels drive behavior and intent
- Optimizing for trial start event without considering product side can lead to crashes
Product Analytics and First-Party Data
27:52 - 34:48
- Performance marketers often optimize for trial start events as a subscription app, but this may lead to product issues.
- Businesses should take a holistic approach to growth and consider marketing, product, and growth as a whole.
- Collecting user-submitted data in the product can provide insights into gender and age splits.
- Utilizing first-party data is important for retargeting and understanding the funnel.
- Segmenting users based on their behavior can help with acquisition, retention, and moving between segments.
- Using first-party data is similar to how Facebook ads were used as an extension of CRM systems in the past.
- Lookalike audiences can still be relevant when using first-party data, but it requires more complex setup.
- For subscription apps, optimizing for purchase may not be effective. Lookalikes can help target specific trial start audiences.
- Product analytics tools like Mixpanel and Amplitude are recommended for understanding marketing investment over time.
Data Analysis and Channel Optimization
34:20 - 41:51
- Using product analytics tools like Mixpanel and Amplitude makes it easy to break down data by age, gender, and channel.
- Building a model based on retention rates and multipliers can help optimize marketing efforts.
- Collecting data during onboarding can lead to valuable insights that increase conversion rates.
- Startups can use tools like the App Store console and Play Store console as a starting point for basic models.
- Interfering with algorithms and adjusting targeting based on specific regions or cities can improve performance.
- Tracking meaningful events in the first 24 hours after install can provide valuable data for optimization.
- Many businesses move into multiple channels too quickly, without fully optimizing their primary channel.
Channel Optimization and Creative Testing
41:25 - 48:53
- Many businesses move into multiple channels too quickly, without a dedicated performance marketer.
- Testing in the beginning is recommended, but then double down on the channel that's working.
- Meta ads are interesting to start with because testing is easy and it helps differentiate from other apps.
- Focusing on one channel rather than broadening is often more effective.
- Some companies either don't invest in any tools or have too many tools at an early stage.
- When starting creative testing, treat everything as a test until spending more than $5k per month.
- Once at scale, test in a separate campaign or ad set for better optimization.
- On iOS, creative level data from Meta ads is not reliable due to predictions based on platform metrics.
- For creative testing on iOS, test similar concepts within one ad set and use another ad set for different angles or audiences.
- Optimizing for trial event plus activation event uncovers more insights than just optimizing for trial starts.
Creative Optimization and New Ad Placements
48:27 - 55:31
- Strong early engagement on a visual hook may indicate potential issues down the funnel.
- Group similar creative targets together, but split out assets for completely new concepts.
- Optimize creative for business metrics rather than click-through rate to avoid optimizing for click-bait.
- Choosing the same optimization goal for testing campaigns and scale campaigns can lead to inaccurate results.
- Use an experimentation setup that mimics the scale campaign to ensure transferable learnings.
- Automate headline and body text testing, but manually handle creative testing for subscription ads.
- The industry may move towards more automation, but Facebook is unlikely to remove other options entirely.
- Threads could become a placement opportunity for ads in the future.
New Ad Placements and Conclusion
55:17 - 1:02:16
- Threads could become a new placement for ads on social media platforms like Twitter.
- The addition of threads as a placement opportunity could provide additional reach and be interesting for advertisers.
- Meta ads allow for creating a media mix within one platform, targeting users along the customer journey.
- Threads can be used for paid content approaches, such as driving users to blog articles or educational content.
- Utilizing different placements in advertising campaigns can yield value, reach, and potentially low CPMs.
- The scrollable nature of threads may unlock a significant amount of inventory for advertisers.
- When new placements open up, there is often an opportunity to capitalize on massive reach at a low cost.
- It is important to consider which creative works best on each placement and iterate accordingly.
- Adding threads as a placement would add another layer to consider when iterating on ads and reaching audiences with specific information consumption habits.
- Twitter ads worked well for Blinkist due to the product's fit with consuming educational content and driving users to blog posts before redirecting them to the app store.
Podcast Flow and Miscellaneous
1:01:50 - 1:07:04
- Mark is an expert in meta ads and broader ads type stuff.
- Consider hiring a specialist to optimize Facebook ads if you have a small team.
- The podcast flow is improving with smooth segues between topics.
- Adding timestamps in show notes helps listeners navigate the podcast more easily.
- Not all marketing podcasts provide timestamps, making it less common in the industry.
- YouTube automatically creates segments with timestamps, which is helpful for viewers.
- Some people have commented that Marcus sounds relaxed and slow, leading to assumptions of being stoned.
- Marcus was asked multiple times by the founder of Divaroo if he smoked weed due to his relaxed speaking style.
- Someone at Hex mentioned that Marcus has a nice voice suitable for sleep stories.
- Marcus jokingly offers to record a sleep story if they become super successful.