We advertise to sell.

Sounds simple, right?

So why should communication around advertising be complex? Some of the best ads I’ve seen (and persuaded) us to buy have been straightforward.

• They communicate benefits.
• They’re devoid of any fluff and vague words like ‘supercharge’, ‘transform’

I recently discovered the Kopywriting blog, and Neiville calls this the “Easy peasy lens”.

Three examples on website, social ads and billboards where this is used.

Example-1

You see the website homepage, you know what they sell. Straightforward, isn’t i

Example-2-

Shopify uses these ads in India. They describe their benefits in a simple way. Delivery, drop shipping. One ad, One Benefit.

Example-3-

Apple has many products that were the ‘firsts’ in the market. Here’s a look at how they explain the benefit. They never say “World’s first portable iPod”, because it means nothing to...

We forget that one ad that made us go ‘wow’.

We don’t recall the one copy that made the difference between ‘oh shit’ and ‘hell yeah’.

And if you’re someone like me you will be searching an endless list of screenshots.

Like this.

Not anymore. I found a hack. It will let you stalk

• your competitors (or anyone’s) ads
• the corresponding landing page(s).

1- Go to the brand’s FB page (I chose GoDaddy).

2- Navigate to ‘Page Transparency’ (on the left pane)

3- Click on ‘See all’

4- Click on ‘Go to Ad Gallery’

5- And BOOM, you now have the list of of all ads (with variations) the page runs.

6- View the corresponding landing page by clicking on the CTA. Decipher the the offers, messaging, creatives, and copies your competitors are deploying.

Here’s the whole process-

Pro tip- You can filter ads by regions, impressions to see their best performing ads.

You don’t need...

Rework is filled with nuggets that are actionable. It’s an added advantage that the chapters are not long-drawn.

My favourite bits-

• Focus on what won’t change. Your business should be built on things that people will care 10 years from now. Ex- Japenese automakers and reliability. Amazon and ‘free shipping’.
• Decomodotize your product by pouring yourself all over it. Every aspect of your business should reflect your personality. Ex- Customer service for Zappos.
• Own the bad news. Don’t give out “apologies” for the sake of it. Mean it. People will be less forgiving.
• Building an audience is critical. Write, shoot, teach and show things that are valuable.
• PR is SPAM! You’re not going to make it to Page-1 until you’re big. Try niche bloggers, who are hungry for ‘fresh meat’.
• Emulate the drug dealers. Give a part of your product as a taster and people will comeback asking for more...

“Make every feature launch as big as possible”, said no one ever.

If you’re in B2B SaaS, feature launches are an essential part of any product marketers lifecycle.

Yet many PMMs see the launch as an event to ‘inform’ customers and ‘train’ the internal folks.

Why can’t we start think of every feature as a ‘BIG-BANG’ launch (read product) of its own? Why should only customer’s know of it.

Here’s a feature launch framework, I have seen do wonders.

I’ve seen a very similar put out by Drift way back in 2018.

Every marquee feature is an opportunity for you to reinforce authority with your prospects and customers. Don’t waste it with just another ‘email blast’

“Sarah”, awakened Mike from his laptop, calling his colleague.

“What’s up?” asked Sarah, leaning back and taking off her red coloured headphones.

“Look, our competitors are writing blogs, and running campaigns that are similar to ours. We need to do something different” said Mike.

“And that’s not it” he continued.

“I feel we’re running out of demand generation tactics” said Mike.

“Look”, started Sarah.

“Your job is not to just churn out good content. It’s your job to come up with tools/ways that will bring repeatability and sustainability to lead generation” said Sarah

“Can you give me a few examples” asked Mike, unable to comprehend her words.

“Sure. Look at these”

• cmo.com by Adobe
• Persona generator by Hubspot
• Freshping by Freshworks
• Ubersuggest by Neil Patel
• fast.com by Netflix

“Building a lightweight, valuable, FREE product/website aligned to your business is a...

As the world is coming back to its feet, I wanted to recall a heartwarming initiative. In the middle of a pandemic.

How would you respond to a pandemic when you have nothing much to say? Especially if you have 100 million followers across your social handles?

In a social media masterclass, Coke did this-

Amplifying messages of NGOs, health workers and organisations working on COVID-19. Those that’s have minimum (or no) social presence.

They followed this on their FB, Instagram and have a press-release detailing out how, why, etc.

A social media masterclass. When your brand is a ‘want’ and not a ‘need’, why not put your 100mn+ following to amplify the necessary messages?

Imagine having two friends Harry & Jammy. Both successful salespeople.

Harry has a panache about everything he does. He loves talking about his passion, style and is a true-blood salesperson. He’s guarded about sharing his vulnerabilities. Rarely shares his secrets with his friends.

Jammy is very similar to P1. Except he’s quite open to sharing and teaching what he knows.

Who would you share a better connection with? Jammy. Right? Because

• He’s open.
• He’s willing to teach you, and learns in the process.

Now translate that to brands. And you have a timeless tactic.

Brands that teach, stand out and connect better.

• Hubspot teaches inbound marketing
• Gary Vaynerchuk owns a wine business. He teaches about wine on Youtube.
• Moz teaches SEO through Whiteboard Fridays.
• Chefs teach their recipes through their cookbooks.

Teaching helps you bond with prospects like no other. You...

Brands suck in advertising around occasions.

Giveaways during festive seasons, colourful creatives popping-up on ‘special days’ (emoji day, anyone?), and the countless “we’re in this together” videos coupled with an equally aimless email.

99% don’t make the cut. They’re all same.

It’s tricky to stand out unless you choose to look the other way.

Here’s an example from India’s numero uno food delivery app, Swiggy. They released this newsletter to mark the end of lockdown in India.

The email had two things

• A subject line that’s intriguing.
  

• A single message- processing 30 million orders with 0 COVID transmission from their staff.

Shows they care. Sells their prowess. Screams reliability.

How did they achieve this? Through what I call the “So what?” technique while designing campaigns.

Let me explain.

Swiggy says

So what?

You can order from Swiggy without the fear of...

I started highlighting my favourite parts of Rework. One highlight after the other, 70% of the book was glowing in yellow :D

One chapter stood out for me- pick a fight. It’s been employed countless times with variations(will write about those).

I came across an unknown example (for me) from the the 2000s. The times when Dunkin Doughnut positioned itself against Starbucks.

They ran prime-time television ads mocking Starbucks for using ‘Fritalian’ terms.

They followed it up with Dunkin beating Starbucks in a blind taste test. In fact, they went on to create DunkinBeatStarbucks.com (defunt)

Some screenshots.

What’s special about this timeless strategy?

• Having an enemy (competitor or an entire industry) gives you a strong story to tell.
• People always get stoked by conflict. They take sides.

This tactic will fall flat if

• your side is not relatable/doesn’t trigger an...