#1 Marketing Dojo Newsletter: The red queen's world, biases in marketing and problem with averages.
Welcome to the first issue of the newsletter.
Happy new year, and welcome to the first issue of the Marketing Dojo.
Starting today, every Monday morning, I will share a few articles, tweets or podcast recommendations that I found interesting.
Why am I doing this now? The world of marketing has been changing rapidly. When I did my MBA 11 years ago, digital marketing was a single-semester course. Thanks to the pandemic, now, a majority of marketing is digital.
I read hundreds of articles every week to stay abreast with what's happening in the arena of marketing. Thru this newsletter, I hope to share some distilled actionable knowledge.
Let me introduce myself:
I have over 12 years of marketing and strategy experience. I have worked at Audi & Porsche, HSBC, Nokia, Caterpillar and 3M innovation. Curiosity is my superpower, and I love to learn new things all the time.
Do connect with me on LinkedIn or mail me at garima.mamgain@gmail.com. I would love to learn a bit more about you and your work.
So here go the three things I want to share this week:
First things work, and then they don't:
My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere, you must run twice as fast as that. - Red Queen, Alice in Wonderland.
The first banner ad in Hotwired had a click-thru rate of 44%1. The ad looked like this.
In 2021, the average click-thru rate for Facebook ads for 19 major industries was around 0.90%2.
As the popularity of specific ad formats or a medium increases, the ad effectiveness increases and then settles down at a much lower level. New ads perform well and then settle at a very low rate.
Andrew Chen's article "The law of Shitty Clickthroughs" is full of numbers and examples and is a sobering read for marketers. Three reasons for the lowering ad performance are
Your target audience responds to something new, and then novelty fades
Competition catches up
As you scale up, qualified customers will decrease
Sadly, there are no shortcuts. We all need to follow Red Queen's advice and run as fast as possible to stay in the same place. Keeping in touch with what's new is critical. In marketing, first-mover advantage is vital and fleeting.
Be aware of biases to be a better marketer:
It is no secret that we humans are more like the emotional Captain Kirk than the analytical Vulcan Dr Spock—creating shortcuts and heuristics help us make faster decisions but opens up the door to biases.
Elon Musk shared an infographic on his Twitter feed about 50 Cognitive biases with a comment, "Should be taught to all at a young age".
This infographic is an excellent reminder for personal improvement but putting on my marketing hat, these are the top two notes for a better planned 2022.
Halo effect: If you see a person as having a positive trait, that positive impression will spill into their other traits.
A strong mother brand can have a huge halo effect on new products. Often overlooked but building a solid brand and protecting it provides intangible benefits.
Spotlight effect: We overestimate how much people pay attention to our behaviour or appearance.
As marketers, we are very close to our brand and products. We often overestimate the relevance of our products in our consumer's life. It is essential to recognize that we are among the many other brands the consumer interacts with.
The devil is in the details.
When your head is in a refrigerator, and your feet is on a burner, the average temperature is okay. I am always cautious about averages. - Andrew Robinson, the president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide.
Our overreliance on averages is scary. Often, averages hide real stories. This quote is a reminder to look beyond averages this week.
Thank you for reading. I appreciate your support. I hope you have a productive work week.
Stay safe, stay healthy and stay curious.
Warm Regards,
Garima
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-first-ever-banner-ad-on-the-web/523728/
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/02/28/facebook-advertising-benchmarks