📞 Interview mistakes.

Crypto ad spend is dropping, how we increased our newsletter referral conversion, and more. July 5, 2022 [Read in browser]( [logo] [sponsor]( Good morning. We’re feeling inspired by this clip of masterful [one-touch soccer](. Here’s hoping your marketing team looks like this as they run and analyze those Q3 campaigns. TWITTER Links are nofollow again [article-image] Did Twitter just prank us all? After making all links dofollow a few weeks ago, Twitter suddenly decided to make links [nofollow again](. What it means: Many search engine optimizers (SEOs) use Twitter as a link source to strengthen their website’s authority. But with Twitter links back to nofollow, getting a backlink from the platform won’t do much for your link building efforts. Why we care: It’s not the first time social media pulled a bait and switch on us. We’ve all seen things like organic reach and promising features come and go. Twitter’s decision just proves two things: - Owning your audience is crucial. - It’s also wise to diversify your link sources so you can mitigate damage to your SEO because of changes like this. Oh, and this makes us wonder… If you’ve been using Twitter dofollow to build links, have you noticed any change in your rankings yet? ADVERTISING Crypto advertising is down Guess we won’t see Matt Damon in any more crypto ads... Crypto companies went from pouring millions of dollars into Super Bowl ads to [kinking the hose](. … And the decline is expected to continue: With the crypto market tanking from $3 trillion in November to $900 billion, companies like Crypto.com and Coinbase are dramatically cutting ad spend. Coinbase alone cut its ad spend by 98% early this year… then cut another 68% in April. Why we care: If you’re in crypto advertising or another industry seeing similar drops in ad spend, it’s not all doom and gloom. Now’s a good time to test more “agile” marketing methods that don’t require huge budgets and still produce good results. Like they say… Adversity breeds opportunity. SPONSORED BY VIDICO 200+ marketers revealed illuminating and actionable insights into video marketing [article-image]( Many companies are using video to make thousands of sales. You should be one of them… But could you do better? Could you learn from data and insights shared by over 200 marketers? We think you can, if you [read The State of Video Marketing in 2022 report](. It will help you understand video marketing better and create a killer video strategy regardless of where you are at now. Here’s why. Vidico gathered more than 200 digital marketing minds and asked them to share why, when, where, and how they use video marketing to fuel their company’s growth. [If you download the free report](, you will discover insights like: - How much companies are spending monthly on video ads. - How video unlocks new audiences and puts you in front of new consumers. - The biggest reason companies use videos – Spoiler alert: It’s not what you think. - The channel that delivers the best video marketing results. - The percentage of ad budget that brands allocate to video ads. [Find out what your peers think about video marketing.]( And if you want to know how much it would cost to produce the right type of video for your marketing, [take the free VidiFit quiz, and find out immediately.]( MARKETING 5 mistakes to avoid when doing customer research [article-image] Lots of marketers know that the better you know your customers, the more successful your marketing will be. That’s not as easy as it sounds, however. [As Katelyn Bourgoin points out, there are five mistakes]( that can get you useless info instead of precious data. Let’s get into ‘em… 1. Asking people what they want: As Steve Jobs once said, “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want.” Customers know their problem, not the solution. So when you interview them, your job is to understand their problem and their emotional state before and after fixing the problem. Once you know that, you can design the solution. 2. Asking people about their future behavior: We humans are terrible at predicting how we’ll behave in the future. You get better information by asking people what they did in the past. Here’s a fun experiment Sony tried: - They asked teenagers what they thought about Sony's new yellow walkman - they loved it! - After the interview, they offered them a free walkman and let them choose between a black and a yellow one. - They all picked the black one. 3. Asking for opinions: While opinions can be insightful, they don’t always match people’s actions, so take them with a grain of salt. 4. Not interviewing actual buyers: The highest quality information will come from people who actually spent money on the product. 5. Bad timing: It's not just who. It’s also when. The best information comes from people who recently bought your product. Why? Because they just went through the decision process, so the emotional and rational reasons for the purchase are still fresh in their mind. Don’t have customers yet? Here’s what you can do: - Interview the customers of your direct competitors. - Interview the customer of your indirect competitors. - Interview prospects in your buying journey. Aaaand there you go! Five things that will help you know your buyers better and create profitable marketing strategies. SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS Don’t wait for Black Friday or Cyber Monday to explode your sales [article-image]( If you read [The Ultimate Holiday Marketing Deep Dive](, you’ll learn that in addition to obvious holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday (BFCM), Easter, and Mother’s Day, there are 30+ other events when people spend boatloads of money. And you’ll also know how to turn any random day of the year into a magnetic promotion. Imagine making BFCM money throughout the year… [Join Insights to get this Deep Dive and level up your holiday marketing.]( THE CREW’S INSIGHTS How we increased our referral conversion rate to 35% [article-image] Want to grow your newsletter? Start a referral program. A substantial portion of our newsletter subscribers come from referrals, a system we’re continually fine-tuning. Here are a few insights from the conversion rate optimization we’ve done: - Remember that referral programs have two audiences. The first is the person doing the referring; the second is the person being referred. It’s easy for marketers to forget about one or the other. - We increased conversion rate by 8% with a simple copy upgrade. We added the phrase “Your friend” to the copy, making the final header “Your friend thinks you want to be a smarter marketer.” This works because of the principle in the first bullet point—you want to include both sides of the referral in your copy. Remind people they’re getting this link from a friend. - We have a referral-specific landing page. Instead of linking referrals to your standard homepage, create a referral-specific page with different copy. Your referral process will feel more personalized this way. It takes some time, but creating a referral-specific page and testing the copy can go a long way to bringing in hundreds or even thousands of new subscribers. ROUNDING UP THE STACK [MARKETING](: Believe it or not, it’s time to plan those winter holidays campaigns. That’s where The Ultimate Holiday Marketing Deep Dive comes in. It’s packed with founders' interviews, data, and case studies to help you boost sales, no matter what the holiday. [Check out the preview here](.* [SEO:]( Marketers spend so much time worrying about all the things Google can penalize us for… Especially when it comes to local SEO. But we rarely talk about methods that are effective and never flagged… like the ones in this article. [BUSINESS:]( Have a great product idea? Unfortunately, most ideas aren’t as good as they seem… and mostly because they never go through a proper validation process. This little framework can help you find out if your idea is as good as it sounds. [METAVERSE:]( If you decide to get your brand inside the metaverse, you’ll have to choose an exact store location. Who would have thought you’d need to think like a brick and mortar in a universe where there is neither? *This is a sponsored post. BRAIN TEASER You see me once in June, twice in November and not at all in May. What am I? [You can find the answer here](. [poolside-logo] POOLSIDE CHAT Never lose a game of Monopoly again [article-image] We recently stumbled on the answer to a question we’ve pondered for decades… How do you win Monopoly every time? Can’t lose with these hacks: [This Twitter thread]( walks you through A-level Monopoly moves like these: - Always buy properties near the jail, as your counterparts are most likely to land on them when they get out. - The single most landed property on the board is Illinois Avenue, so buy it before your competitors do. So… Anyone want to play monopoly? SHARING IS CARING How would you like complete access to our content library… for free? All you have to do is get four people to subscribe to our newsletter. That’s literally it. Just share the link below with other smart marketers, CEOs, or entrepreneurs, and you’ll earn access to our growing library of The Crew’s Insights. 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