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Happy Friday Marketing Engineers!
Today:
👩🏫 Introducing Study Mode, A New Way To Learn In ChatGPT
🤖 7 Ways To Get Better Results From AI Image Generators
🦠 Referrals Are Contagious
👮 How To Strengthen Your Brand's Authority
🤔 Should My Company Invest In A Reddit Strategy?
🚨 Social Media Captures Majority Of Digital Attention As Video Outpaces TV
🚀 Ada{m}
P.S. In case you missed our ANNOUNCEMENT earlier this week 😊
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🗞 Marketing News
Reddit has introduced automated bidding for Brand Awareness campaigns, replacing the previous manual CPM bidding system with two new strategies—Lowest cost and Cost cap—that simplify campaign management and optimize delivery for brand awareness and reach objectives. Early testing demonstrated significant performance improvements, with advertisers seeing an average 16% decrease in CPM and 17% increase in impressions compared to manual bidding approaches. The feature is easy to implement through simple steps in Reddit Ads Manager when creating or editing Brand Awareness campaigns and is now available globally in public beta, with automated bidding also available for other campaign objectives like traffic, conversions, app installs, catalog sales, and lead generation.
TikTok To Build Out Search Ads As Spending Grows [4 min read]
TikTok is heavily investing in search advertising by hiring lots of new people (122 open positions) and actively selling search ads to agencies and brands, showing they want search to be a major part of their business, not just a side feature. About half of some agencies' clients are now testing TikTok search ads with mixed results - some see great performance improvements while others find it doesn't work as well as Google, so most are moving small budgets from other social media spending rather than taking money away from Google. TikTok admits they're still in the early stages and being cautious about overpromising, but they're confident that people are already searching on their platform enough to make this a big opportunity in the future.
Google is finally launching an API for Google Trends after years of people asking for it, which will let developers and businesses access search trend data directly through code instead of having to use the website manually. The API provides more reliable data that can be easily compared across different searches, covers the last 5 years with daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly breakdowns, and includes geographic information by region and country. Right now, only a limited number of alpha testers can access it by applying, and it's mainly designed for researchers, publishers, and marketers who want to track trends, spot emerging topics, and make better business decisions based on what people are searching for.
Video has become the most powerful content format for B2B marketing on LinkedIn, getting shared 20 times more than other content types, with success depending more on good storytelling than expensive production. LinkedIn studied 13,000 B2B videos and found that the best-performing ones use five key strategies: being culturally relevant (like using memes), showing real human emotion, featuring accessible experts, grabbing attention with bold visuals, and telling inspiring stories that go beyond just product features. The most effective approach uses two types of videos together - longer cinematic "brand films" for building awareness and shorter authentic "real talk" videos featuring real people for building trust and driving decisions.
🤖 AI
Study Mode helps students learn by guiding them through problems step-by-step instead of just giving them the answers, using interactive questions and personalized support to encourage real understanding rather than quick solutions. The feature was built with teachers and learning experts using proven educational methods like asking guiding questions, providing hints, and giving quizzes to help students think critically and retain information better. Study mode is now available to most ChatGPT users and represents the first step in OpenAI's longer plan to improve AI-powered learning, with future updates planned to include better visualizations, progress tracking, and more personalized tutoring based on student feedback and ongoing research.
To get better AI images, use specific techniques like style codes for consistency, brainstorm ideas with AI before creating them, and have AI write detailed prompts for you instead of guessing what to say. Different AI tools are good at different things, so try multiple platforms like Midjourney, ChatGPT, and others since each one has unique strengths for creating portraits, graphics, or editing images. The key is to treat AI as a creative partner rather than a magic shortcut - expect to iterate and refine your results multiple times, and use AI to quickly explore lots of ideas before settling on the best ones.
New Ways To Learn And Explore With AI Mode In Search [4 min read]
Google's AI Mode now lets you upload PDFs and images to ask detailed questions about your documents, like lecture slides or study materials, and it will analyze them and find related information from the web to help you understand better. The new Canvas feature helps you organize and plan projects by creating dynamic study guides or plans that you can work on over multiple sessions and come back to later, making it easier to stay organized for big tasks like test prep. Search Live allows you to point your phone's camera at anything and have a real-time conversation with AI about what you're looking at, like getting help with science experiments or math problems by simply showing them to your camera.
🧠 Hacks & Tactics
Referrals Are Contagious [7 min read]
Research shows that referred customers are significantly more likely to make referrals themselves, with some studies showing up to 71% higher referral rates than non-referred customers, creating a powerful domino effect for business growth. These referred customers also demonstrate consistently higher value across multiple metrics, including making more purchases, having higher conversion rates, and being up to 2.5 times more likely to convert to full memberships. The referral effect can be further amplified by strategically reminding referred customers about how they joined and implementing dual-sided reward systems, as people who were referred find it more socially appropriate to refer others and have greater confidence in the brand's quality.
The neuroscience concept of "branding moments" reveals that placing your brand or call-to-action at the precise moment when viewers understand a story creates significantly more memorable content and drives conversions. Successful content like Cadbury's "Gorilla" ad and Adobe's "Mean Streets" video prioritize compelling storytelling over explicit selling until this critical memory-encoding peak. This science-backed approach, validated through Steady State Topography (SST) technology, works across various formats and shows that content featuring real emotion and early story arcs performs substantially better at capturing and maintaining audience attention.
How To Strengthen Your Brand's Authority [8 min read]
Strengthening your brand's authority begins with a solid foundation of excellent products, impeccable service, and consistent identity that makes your brand instantly recognizable. Success requires strategic, customer-focused content delivered through multiple channels that solves real problems your audience faces. Finally, leveraging external voices through brand ambassadors and niche influencers while maintaining adaptability to industry changes ensures your brand remains relevant and trusted.
🏗️ For Founders
What Founders Teach Us [7 min read]
Founders are fearless risk-takers who choose uncertainty over safety, willing to bet everything on their ideas even though most startups fail, because they have an unshakable belief that they can beat the odds. They combine smart learning with great execution, constantly seeking different opinions and focusing on building complete business systems rather than just good products, knowing that the team that executes better usually wins. The best founders have a unique ability to stay focused on their vision even when others don't believe, ignore unhelpful criticism, and most importantly, recruit amazing people to help them build the future they see in their minds.
Should My Company Invest In A Reddit Strategy? [4 min read]
Reddit is becoming more important because AI systems like ChatGPT use Reddit conversations to learn, so if your brand gets mentioned positively on Reddit, it could influence what AI tells people about your company. Success on Reddit requires being genuine and helpful over time rather than trying to advertise directly, since the community quickly rejects obvious marketing and rewards authentic contributors who add real value to discussions. The best approach is to start by participating in existing Reddit communities related to your industry, observe what works, build trust by being helpful, and only then consider sharing your own content or creating a company subreddit once you've earned credibility.
🔮 The Future
Hierarchical Reasoning Model [50 min read]
The Hierarchical Reasoning Model (HRM) is a small 27-million parameter AI that dramatically outperforms much larger models on complex reasoning tasks like puzzles and mazes, using only 1000 training examples instead of the massive datasets other models require. It works by mimicking the brain's structure with two connected modules—one for high-level planning and one for detailed work—that operate at different speeds and avoid the problems that make other AI models fail at deep reasoning. This brain-inspired approach allows HRM to think more like humans do and solve problems that stump even the most advanced AI systems, suggesting a new way to build truly intelligent machines.
Marketing Concerns Over AI Search May Be Overblown [12 min read]
Most marketers are actually seeing increased or stable traffic since Google's AI Overviews launched, rather than the massive losses many predicted. Marketers are quickly adapting by changing their SEO strategies and focusing more on tracking their presence in ChatGPT rather than Google, while emphasizing brand mentions and manual monitoring since automated tools haven't caught up yet. Instead of being a disaster, AI search appears to be creating a complex mix of winners and losers that requires smart adaptation and diversification rather than just defensive measures.
Social media has overtaken TV as the main source of entertainment, with people spending almost 14 hours a week scrolling through platforms like TikTok and Instagram compared to just over 10 hours watching television, especially among younger users who heavily favor short, bite-sized videos. The creator economy is booming with over 5 billion people online and using social media, but creators face challenges because no single platform dominates and Google is sending less traffic to websites due to AI search features that answer questions directly. While this creates a more complex landscape for content creators to navigate, it also opens up new opportunities as AI platforms like ChatGPT gain massive popularity and people increasingly discover brands through social media rather than traditional search.
TikTok is rolling out "Footnotes," which is basically their version of the fact-checking feature that other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook already have. Currently, about 80,000 eligible users (who must be over 18, live in the U.S., and have clean accounts) are testing the feature by adding fact-checks to videos, and other users will soon be able to see and rate these footnotes. The system will get better over time as more people participate, with both automated systems and human moderators keeping an eye on the fact-checks to make sure they're accurate and follow the rules.
👩🏫 Vocab
Behavioral Marketing: Marketing strategies based on customers' online behavior, browsing patterns, and purchase history. It uses data about how people interact with your brand to deliver more relevant messages. Behavioral marketing helps create more personalized customer experiences.
Example: An online retailer sends different email promotions to customers who browse winter coats versus those who look at summer dresses.
Growth Marketing: A data-driven approach to marketing that focuses on the entire customer journey rather than just acquisition. It emphasizes continuous testing and improvement across all stages of the funnel. Growth marketing aims to create sustainable, long-term business growth.
Example: A subscription service continuously tests different welcome emails, onboarding flows, and retention programs to improve customer lifetime value.
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