🗣 Disruptive.

Google wants to help you understand how Search works. Here’s why MVPs should be thrown out with yesterday's leftovers. September 29, 2021 [Read in browser]( [logo] [sponsor]( Happy Wednesday! The US might be on the brink of another shutdown, but Amazon is coming up with new ways to make money! Yesterday, after many, many, manyyyy failed attempts, the company [successfully launched]( their own video game: New World. Over half a million people played concurrently on Steam, making it the platform’s fifth highest concurrent players peak ever. Maybe the government should come up with a video game to take care of America’s debt crisis…it could be big bucks. E-COMMERCE Google publishes best practices for e-commerce in Google Search Here’s a handy page to bookmark for your “things-i-must-do-for-my-ecommerce-website” folder. The Google Search Central documentation [has just been updated]( with a page titled “Best practices for e-commerce sites." What this page is about: If you run an e-commerce website, you want to play well with Google. This includes knowing how to share your product data, include structured data, design a URL structure, and get indexed on a regular basis. The Crew’s take: We love all of Google’s documentation because it's concise, to the point, and actionable. This page is no different. We just wish they did the same with Search updates... TIKTOK TikTok wants to disrupt advertising, influencer marketing and e-commerce [article-image] Take a look at all of the TikTok marketing rumors we've published in the last few months… All of them came true today. TikTok World, the company's virtual business event, has just concluded. The company shared some of their announcements [in a blog post](, and...there are a lot of them. We'll try to summarize them briefly and provide links to further reading: - [Advertising:]( TikTok announced tools to track campaign reach and frequency, as well as an “inventory” filter to control where ads appear. - [E-commerce:]( TikTok Shopping is here. You can upload products and manage the entire shopping flow (from shipping to fulfillment) within the app. There are also integrations with Shopify, Square, Ecwid and PrestaShop. Furthermore, you can highlight your products directly from an organic TikTok video, host live shopping events, and run in-feed video e-commerce ads and interest-based ads. - [Influencer marketing:]( TikTok launched its "Creator Marketplace," a platform for finding relevant creators to promote your products. You can also post campaign briefs in the Creator Marketplace so that creators who are a good fit can apply. Overall, it appears that TikTok is taking a lot of chances in the hopes that at least one of them will result in a major win. As long as these changes help marketers, we don’t mind. SPONSORED BY #PAID Get your influencer marketing campaigns ready with $750 worth of content right here [article-image]( It’s full steam ahead for Black Friday. It’s coming, whether you are ready or not… And we have a gift from #paid to get you ready. [If you sign up for the Advanced plan today](, you will get $750 worth of Black Friday content for free. First time hearing about #paid? Well, #paid connects you with the most influential creators out there - fast and easy. We don’t need to tell you how vital this type of content is for your campaigns, right? Here’s how easy things will go for your Black Friday campaigns: - You fill in your campaign goals. - #paid matches you with 10 on-brand creators. - You pick your favorites out of them. - Approve content. - Watch the results roll in. It’s that easy. [And it’s why you should start right now]( before the best creators are taken. [Get $750 worth of Black Friday content now by signing up to #paid.]( (Offer valid for U.S and Canada users only) BUSINESS The case against MVPs [article-image] About to launch a new business? Traditional idea: To predict whether a startup idea will be successful, you build an MVP (minimum viable product) and test if the market likes it. According to Gagan Biyani, this idea is broken. And [here he explained why the MVP concept doesn’t work](, and what to do instead. Read on! The problems with MVP: - MVP leads founders to overbuild: When you build an MVP, you start thinking about all the features your product needs. This takes your eyes off the core insights you need to validate. - MVP leads creators to focus on what customers say: If you’re an old fox, you’ll know that what customers say they want doesn’t reflect what they actually buy. - MVP makes for horrible core products: When a startup wants to rush to get a product out the door, they end up making poor decisions that reflect in the long term. The solution? MVT, or minimum viable tests. What’s an MVT? If you’re launching a startup, it means you have a hypothesis (some assumptions) about the market. With MVT, you’re testing these assumptions to see if they are true. If they are, you will be successful. Step 1 - Find your value propositions: How are you going to give value to users. Keep this simple. Airbnb, Stripe, and Uber had ridiculously simple value propositions. Step 2 - List the riskiest assumptions that might lead your business to succeed or fail. Test hypothesis about your market fit, the market size, marketing, margins, etc. Step 3 - Test the atomic unit of what you plan to sell. For Google, it’s a search query. For Amazon, ordering a book online. Remember, the key here is to test what you think you already know versus building a completely new product to see if it will work. If this caught your curiosity, [you’ll find more]( here along with some real-life experiences Gagan Biyani had with other startups. ROUNDING UP THE STACK [EMAIL:]( You know this channel is powerful… And what’s even more powerful is how this Trends member gets a 70% response rate with “video emails”. Don’t worry, it’s all explained! [Find out how he does it in this article.](* [SNAPCHAT:]( Ho, Ho, Ho! Snapchat just released a holiday marketing guide with trends and creative ideas. [E-COMMERCE:]( You know that the buy-now-pay-later market is getting really big when payment companies like Mastercard get into it. [BUSINESS:]( More and more Americans are delaying major life decisions (like having a baby or retiring). This is disrupting more industries than you might think. [MICROSOFT:]( If you have a financial product, Microsoft wants you. The company recently announced “Credit card ads.” [CLUBHOUSE:]( Sponsors don’t like Clubhouse. And, unfortunately, it seems like Clubhouse can’t (or doesn’t want to) do anything about it. *This is a sponsored post. BRAIN TEASER Which word in the English language does all the following: the first two letters signify a male, the first three letters signify a female, the first four letters signify a great person, while the entire word signifies a great woman. What is the word? You can find the [solution here](. [poolside-logo] POOLSIDE CHAT The most hated brands (by country) [article-image] Which brand do you really hate? Is it Google? Sony? Or KFC? If you live in New Zealand, you most likely selected the last option. If you live in Israel, you probably know a friend or two who hates Google. And Sony, well, it’s the most hated brand in the world. Those are the results of an [analysis by RAVE Reviews](, which analyzed millions of tweets to calculate the “hate rate” for various brands. Here are some highlights from the analysis: - People in the United States hate Uber the most, while Canadians (for some reason) hate Game Freak. - Sony had the highest “hate rate” in Canada, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Greece, Austria and 5 more countries. It appears that those PlayStations irritate a lot of people. LEGO was also on the list. What did LEGO do to hurt anybody? “Stepping on a #lego is the worst feeling!!”, [according to a tweet by @RockNWash.]( Well, as the saying goes, "haters gonna hate.” And they always find a reason to. SHARING IS CARING Share this email with your friends and get cool rewards! From our Insights Poolside Chat, to stickers, T-shirts, one-of-a-kind coin, custom-made magazine cover, to lifetime Insights full membership and a trip to Vienna, Austria! Just click the button below! It takes less than 60 seconds to share. [article-image]( [CLICK TO SHARE]( Or copy your referral link: [ [SUBSCRIBE]( | [INSIGHTS]( | [ADVERTISE]( You are receiving this email because you want to know what is going on in digital marketing. If you aren't thrilled about our emails, reply and let us know why. Or you can unsubscribe from all daily updates by clicking [here.]( Our postal address: Spectrum IT Solutions GmbH, Schwindgasse 10/Top 13, 1040 Wien, Austria