🤖 Robots 🩷 Sticky Brands
📈 10X Is Easier Than 2X
🚧 Production Before Strategy
🤖 Robots 🩷 Sticky Brands
Chat GPT burst onto the scene in November 2022, and now it’s everywhere. I thought marketers had a chance, “There’s no way AI will replace copywriting or graphic design.” But it is. It has. And it’s good! It won’t be too long before we see AI replacing search. Why search when AI can give you the answer?
If AI becomes the primary medium of digital marketing, and I think it will, there are 2 steps to keep your brand relevant:
- Use the Tools. You can’t learn AI if you don’t use AI.
- Brands Win with AI. Build customer relationships early and often.
Your brand levels the playing field. If you have a Sticky Brand, people will seek out your business no matter the technology.
One Stat to Watch
47%
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) purchases surged 47% for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to Adobe Analytics. Consumer spending is breaking every record, but it's fueled on debt and sky high interest rates. All industries should be wary. Cash is king in 2024.
📈 10X Is Easier Than 2X
Think bigger to grow your brand. Surprisingly, it's easier to vision 10X (or ten times) growth than it is to plan for the minutiae of doubling your business.
December is always a busy time of year at Sticky Branding with year end strategic planning. Instead of simply looking at incremental, achievable growth targets, we guide our clients to take a bigger view:
- What would the business look like at 10X its current size?
- What would the strategy be if you 10X’d it?
- What would 10X require for brand positioning, people, partnerships, capital equipment, or markets?
- What would it mean for the owners, personally?
Companies have predictable stages of growth, or revenue plateaus: $1 million, $5 million, $10 million, $25 million, $50 million, $100 million, and so on.
Each plateau can be a major hurdle to cross, and often companies get stuck at key points along the way. Breaking through revenue plateaus involves a major shift for the business. 10X visioning helps you see the strategy and what it’ll take to punch through the plateaus.
🚧 Production Before Strategy
“Strategy first” is a myth, at least when it comes to content marketing. Marketing is like exercising. You can have all the plans and ideas in the world, but they’re meaningless if you haven’t started.
The starting point for content marketing isn’t strategy, it’s production. Set a publishing schedule and do the work. That could be publishing twice a week to LinkedIn, a monthly newsletter, or daily on TikTok. It doesn’t matter. Start and stick to it.
Once you have 3 to 6 months of content delivered consistently, you will see trends. You will see what works and doesn’t work. You will learn what you can produce sustainably, and what types of content grind you down. Those insights are the first steps toward strategy.
Taking the exercise metaphor a step further, you get better with effort. You gain energy, skill, and confidence. It becomes sport! That’s the same continuum for content marketing. Do the work to get more strategic.
🤔 Thoughts on Today's Issue?
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Sticky Branding has been on a growth curve the past few years, but our success broke our marketing. It became like the Shoemaker’s children, and in March 2022 we stopped publishing.
For over a decade I blogged and published a weekly newsletter with a constant drumbeat of social media posts. Seeing this all stop was disconcerting. As much as I am sharing advice, the section "Production Before Strategy" is written for me.
Please share your feedback, and I will make every issue even better!