Here are 7 Must Read stories and one deep-dive that didn’t make Friday’s Must Reads or have come up before I hit send on Friday morning.
If you are out of work or know someone who is, happily hit reply with your details and I am going to have a feature on the newsletter. Happily, help spread the word.
Ouch: How Pepsi and Coca Cola are making millions from tap water 💧 - Link
“Free”: Earlier this week Google has made shopping "free" with ad support to compete with Amazon. Let the long battle commence in and out of the SERP's 🧾- Link
Show Me The Money: Students at top universities are demanding a refund for the closure of their unis 💵 - Link
Marmite: You might love or hate them, but what makes a good and great product manager ✅- Link
Let’s Dance: There are hundreds of things we are missing currently, for teens it is Prom and it’s becoming a big trend 👗- Link
PIVOT: An interesting look at how conferences have had to pivot and how they consider their opportunity 💻 - Link
Lockdown Podcasting? Grounded with Louis Theroux is the BBC latest podcast, leveraging its talent in lockdown - Link Question: Would you listen to “audio” Louis and people he’s always wanted to interview?
Tired of work-related video call software? Facebook updated their portfolio on Friday; You can now have a video call for 8 people on WhatsApp & 50 people on Messenger Rooms 💭- Link
—5 Tips—
This weekend's 5 tips are from long term friend and agency co-founder Paddy Moogan. Paddy runs Digital Marketing Agency Aira, his tips help you navigate the current situation and actionable tips for the digital space. Paddy has recently made his 🔗link building book free to download.
— There is a lot going on in the world right now and being totally honest, no one really knows what's going to happen next. We all know that customer behaviours have changed massively and some of them will change back to how they were before whilst others will be changed forever. In times like this, we need to firstly stay calm and take stock of the situation as objectively as possible. Secondly, we need to invest in the things which we know are as likely to be "right" as possible in the next few months. If you're working on digital channels, here are five tips which hopefully illustrate what I mean:
When it comes to SEO, customers are always going to want pages that are easy to navigate quickly, fast loading, and responsive - invest in improving these things.
Of course, related to SEO, we have link building. My tip here would be to focus heavily on producing link-worthy content that remains link-worthy for as long as possible i.e. avoid one-hit wonders or campaigns that are tied to a specific day or event.
For paid search, many brands are understandably cutting back budgets right now. This can be the right thing to do, but be careful not to cut too deep. Paid traffic can offset drops in organic search, so concentrate spend on filling organic search gaps so that they sync up as much as possible.
Content creation is still very important and whilst many copywriters have been put on hold for new content, now is a great time to refresh your existing, older content to try and get more from what ranks already. A good copywriter doesn't need loads of time to refresh an existing page which means that you can cover a lot of ground with less overall budget.
Finally, email marketing is a huge channel right now. Don't get caught up addressing COVID-19 if you don't really need to. Instead, focus on sharing what your company is doing to help and try to be as upbeat as you can whilst being sensitive to what's going on in the world.
The Streaming Wars - Huge Human Importance 📺 - Link
"Content is king" is used frequently, content is king, but distribution is king, queen and everything in-between right now
Choice (& time at home) enables us to increase our viewing but recommendations from friends, family, and social media drive that extra sub of $/£5 to $/£12 per month
We have never had such a wealth of content as we do today. The battleground now is if you are rich enough you skip ads and buy subscriptions if not you have to stomach irrelevant ads on your TV or online
The global content leader is Netflix, Netflix now has 182.9 million subscribers worldwide, with an amazing Q1 bringing in an additional 15.8 million net customer additions (more than double what they expected). Tiger King’s popularity hasn’t been referenced but would be key. Disney+ recently hit 50m subscribers and controlling a good % of viewing hours, all for a fair price. Exclusive content with a viral protagonist = subs & mass reach.
Other platforms have screamed about how popular their streaming services are (minus maybe Quibi) with record streams for iPlayer and All4. iPlayer might just win just because of Killing Eve streaming 4 days on there first.
Netflix might just be in pole position> Why? As Netflix won't be hurt by the production wows others are as they shoot in advance to enable us to binge-watch, whereas TV and streaming competitors simply don't have this luxury.
The internal Netflix matra for content, (or secret sauce) content has to “connect” and offer an “Escape or be joyous”.
Thanks for reading and enjoy your Sunday. Danny Denhard ~ Advisor & Consultant
Sunday Must Reads
Sunday Must Reads
Sunday Must Reads
Here are 7 Must Read stories and one deep-dive that didn’t make Friday’s Must Reads or have come up before I hit send on Friday morning.
If you are out of work or know someone who is, happily hit reply with your details and I am going to have a feature on the newsletter. Happily, help spread the word.
Ouch: How Pepsi and Coca Cola are making millions from tap water 💧 - Link
“Free”: Earlier this week Google has made shopping "free" with ad support to compete with Amazon. Let the long battle commence in and out of the SERP's 🧾- Link
Show Me The Money: Students at top universities are demanding a refund for the closure of their unis 💵 - Link
Marmite: You might love or hate them, but what makes a good and great product manager ✅- Link
Let’s Dance: There are hundreds of things we are missing currently, for teens it is Prom and it’s becoming a big trend 👗- Link
PIVOT: An interesting look at how conferences have had to pivot and how they consider their opportunity 💻 - Link
Lockdown Podcasting? Grounded with Louis Theroux is the BBC latest podcast, leveraging its talent in lockdown - Link
Question: Would you listen to “audio” Louis and people he’s always wanted to interview?
Tired of work-related video call software? Facebook updated their portfolio on Friday; You can now have a video call for 8 people on WhatsApp & 50 people on Messenger Rooms 💭- Link
—5 Tips—
This weekend's 5 tips are from long term friend and agency co-founder Paddy Moogan. Paddy runs Digital Marketing Agency Aira, his tips help you navigate the current situation and actionable tips for the digital space. Paddy has recently made his 🔗link building book free to download.
— There is a lot going on in the world right now and being totally honest, no one really knows what's going to happen next. We all know that customer behaviours have changed massively and some of them will change back to how they were before whilst others will be changed forever. In times like this, we need to firstly stay calm and take stock of the situation as objectively as possible. Secondly, we need to invest in the things which we know are as likely to be "right" as possible in the next few months. If you're working on digital channels, here are five tips which hopefully illustrate what I mean:
When it comes to SEO, customers are always going to want pages that are easy to navigate quickly, fast loading, and responsive - invest in improving these things.
Of course, related to SEO, we have link building. My tip here would be to focus heavily on producing link-worthy content that remains link-worthy for as long as possible i.e. avoid one-hit wonders or campaigns that are tied to a specific day or event.
For paid search, many brands are understandably cutting back budgets right now. This can be the right thing to do, but be careful not to cut too deep. Paid traffic can offset drops in organic search, so concentrate spend on filling organic search gaps so that they sync up as much as possible.
Content creation is still very important and whilst many copywriters have been put on hold for new content, now is a great time to refresh your existing, older content to try and get more from what ranks already. A good copywriter doesn't need loads of time to refresh an existing page which means that you can cover a lot of ground with less overall budget.
Finally, email marketing is a huge channel right now. Don't get caught up addressing COVID-19 if you don't really need to. Instead, focus on sharing what your company is doing to help and try to be as upbeat as you can whilst being sensitive to what's going on in the world.
➡️ Connect with Paddy on LinkedIn ⬅️
Share
If you like the tips series and fear you missed them, here is the comprehensive Must Reads Tips list.
—Going A Bit Deeper—
The Streaming Wars - Huge Human Importance 📺 - Link
"Content is king" is used frequently, content is king, but distribution is king, queen and everything in-between right now
Choice (& time at home) enables us to increase our viewing but recommendations from friends, family, and social media drive that extra sub of $/£5 to $/£12 per month
We have never had such a wealth of content as we do today. The battleground now is if you are rich enough you skip ads and buy subscriptions if not you have to stomach irrelevant ads on your TV or online
The global content leader is Netflix, Netflix now has 182.9 million subscribers worldwide, with an amazing Q1 bringing in an additional 15.8 million net customer additions (more than double what they expected). Tiger King’s popularity hasn’t been referenced but would be key. Disney+ recently hit 50m subscribers and controlling a good % of viewing hours, all for a fair price. Exclusive content with a viral protagonist = subs & mass reach.
Other platforms have screamed about how popular their streaming services are (minus maybe Quibi) with record streams for iPlayer and All4. iPlayer might just win just because of Killing Eve streaming 4 days on there first.
Netflix might just be in pole position> Why? As Netflix won't be hurt by the production wows others are as they shoot in advance to enable us to binge-watch, whereas TV and streaming competitors simply don't have this luxury.
The internal Netflix matra for content, (or secret sauce) content has to “connect” and offer an “Escape or be joyous”.
Thanks for reading and enjoy your Sunday.
Danny Denhard
~ Advisor & Consultant