Marc Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix, joins us for another episode of Ask Marc, a live Q&A series about starting and growing your business. The event will begin on Thursday, February 15th at 2:00 PM ET, streaming on our YouTube & LinkedIn channels.
Where can I watch Ask Marc?
Watch and stream: YouTube & LinkedIn
You can watch on your phone, tablet or computer. Ask Marc will be shown in its entirety on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter
What time does Ask Marc start?
Date: February 15th
Time: 2:00 PM ET
The episode kicks off at 2:00pm ET.
Why should I watch Ask Marc?
Get free business advice directly from the co-founder of Netflix, Marc Randolph. Marc loves helping founders and small business owners, and this your free opportunity to ask him any of your questions about topics like:
- Starting a business
- Growing a business
- Raising money
- Building marketing campaigns
- Best practices
- Anything you want to know!
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In the grand game of real estate, there’s a new king on the board. The suburbs are not just surviving, they’re thriving, and it’s all thanks to the game-changer that is flexible work. Who needs a skyscraper view when your office is your living room, and your commute, is a mere amble from bed to desk?
“We expect the ability to WFH to remain an incentive for young families to seek out more remote suburban and rural markets where housing may be more affordable,” a recent Bank of America report suggests. It’s like swapping a sardine-can city apartment for a comfortable, spacious home. It’s not rocket science; it’s simply the art of making work work for you.
The five-day office week, like the dodo, is heading for extinction. Lawrence Yun, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, says, “A little bit of a longer commute is not a hindrance” if you’re not in the office Monday to Friday, 9-5. Not when you’ve got the flexibility to decide where and when you work. Why endure the daily urban rat race when you can occasionally roll with the relaxed suburban pace instead?
Related: A New Remote Work Trend is Helping Employers Retain Talent Amid Labor Market Pressures
Millennials: Not so urban after all
Remember when we thought millennials were city slickers, with their Uber rides and brunch habits? Turns out, they’re embracing the suburban dream as eagerly as a kid pouncing on the last slice of pizza.
Hyojung Lee, a professor of housing and property management at Virginia Tech, humorously notes, “We’ve always talked about millennials as urban people… But it turns out they’re not that cool anymore.” Indeed, some 45% of millennials now plan to buy homes in the suburbs, according to a recent Bank of America survey. That’s up from 33% in 2015. Perhaps it’s not about being “cool” anymore but about being “smart.”
The gourmet exodus: A culinary revolution in suburbia
This new suburban migration is not just about homes and workplaces. It’s also transforming the gastronomic landscape. Urban retail vacancies surpassed suburban ones in 2022, for the first time since 2013, according to the Wall Street Journal. Like ants to a picnic, restaurants and retailers are flocking to these thriving town centers.
Consider the salad chain, Sweetgreen. Once a downtown staple, it’s now making the suburbs its main stage with 50% of its locations nestled there. And it’s not just salad — even big-name chefs are choosing suburban towns for their next culinary adventures. It’s as if suburbia has become the new Manhattan for the restaurant world.
The face of suburbia is changing, too. Long associated with homogeneity, suburbs are now outpacing the national average for racial diversity, according to a Brookings Institution analysis. The stereotype of the white picket fence is slowly giving way to a vibrant mosaic of cultural diversity.
The city still stands: A reality check
Despite this suburban boom, downtowns aren’t ready to throw in the towel just yet. Yun reminds us that people are returning to city centers, even in the hybrid work era. And while suburbs close to cities are flourishing, demand in the far-out ‘burbs has dropped significantly since the pandemic’s peak.
So, in this grand game of real estate, it’s not about cities losing or suburbs winning. It’s about recognizing that the playing field is changing. As we embrace the flexibility that technology affords us, our living preferences are evolving in turn. As I tell my clients whom I helped figure out their return to office and hybrid work plans, you need to go where your employees are, rather than simply trying to impose a top-down command-control structure on them — at least, if you want to retain your top talent.
Cognitive biases: Unseen forces shaping our choices
Underneath our decision-making processes, cognitive biases often run the show. They’re like puppeteers, subtly influencing our choices and judgments. Two key biases that might be influencing this suburban migration are the status quo bias and the anchoring bias.
First, let’s consider the status quo bias. This is our tendency to prefer things to stay the same by doing nothing or maintaining our current or previous decision. With the onset of the pandemic, the status quo was disrupted, forcing us to adapt to a new “normal” — working from home.
For many, this temporary change has transformed into a comfortable routine. The novelty has worn off, replaced by the status quo bias. We’ve become accustomed to the convenience, freedom and flexibility of remote work. The prospect of returning to our previous lifestyle — the daily commute, the rigid office hours — seems more daunting than sticking to the new status quo.
The anchoring bias, on the other hand, refers to our tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information we encounter (the “anchor”) when making decisions. When the pandemic hit, the “anchor” for many was the vision of a lifestyle free from daily commuting and office constraints. This initial impression has strongly influenced subsequent decisions about work and living arrangements.
Moreover, as we have seen suburban life flourish — with burgeoning retail spaces, diverse communities, and the promise of a more balanced lifestyle — these positive first impressions have only been reinforced. The anchor has been cast, and it’s landed firmly in suburban territory.
By understanding these cognitive biases, we can make more informed decisions about our work and lifestyle choices. As we navigate this era of change, it’s crucial to challenge our biases, question our assumptions, and remain open to all possibilities. Only then can we truly make the most of the opportunities that the future of work presents.
Conclusion
In the end, whether it’s the city’s siren call or the suburb’s sweet serenade that wins your heart, it’s clear that flexible work has forever changed the way we live. It’s reshaped not just our working lives, but our homes, our communities and our landscapes. The suburbs are having their moment in the sun, not as a retreat from the city, but as a compelling alternative.
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In the midst of economic turmoil, CEOs and entrepreneurs are focusing on a bright future. Nearly 75% of leaders surveyed during a joint Hello Alice-Mastercard initiative said they planned to grow in 2023. This means business owners nationwide aren’t allowing the heat of inflation to squelch their optimism. However, they can only generate good results with equally good data-driven digital marketing strategies.
Fortunately, this isn’t a revelation to most leaders. Everyone has heard about the importance of data. Yet, many companies spend less time mapping out a successful, data-backed, growth-centered plan than the average family does when preparing for a vacation. It’s just not enough to choose some data points to measure.
To see growth — and scalability when your team is ready for it — your business needs to know where it wants to go. When you have a destination in mind, you can reverse-engineer your process to determine which data you need to make your growth dreams a reality. You’re bound to wander off course when you don’t have a destination set in stone. That’s costly but fortunately avoidable.
To start, you need to do a deep dive to understand what “growth” looks like for your company. Instead of picking metrics based on what you think you should measure or setting up data reports, answer four questions. First, where do you want your business to go in the coming 12 months? Pinpoint specific goals. Second, do you have assets in place that are helping you reach those goals? These could be anything from audiences and offers to channels.
With these questions answered, evaluate how your existing assets are working. In other words, where are the gaps? Be very honest with what you see, or else you won’t be able to respond to the last question: Is your current plan helping you reach those goals?
Once you’ve taken this deep dive into your overall sales and marketing objectives and strategies, you can employ data-focused, successful digital marketing measures. Each of these measures will nudge you closer to the growth you want and protect you from preventable roadblocks.
Related: 3 Steps to Assemble the Right Infrastructure Building Blocks to Successfully Scale Your Business
1. Set up metrics that are personalized to your stated goals
You’ll never be confident that you’re moving in the right direction unless you measure the right metrics. One of the biggest errors many leaders make is not testing their metrics or KPIs against their overall growth strategy objectives. Your metrics must have an impact and not just be chosen at random.
A 2021 Adverity announcement indicated that around one-third of all CMOs don’t trust their marketing data. That is, they’re reluctant to believe the metrics their dashboards show. You can’t afford to be in this position because it hinders your ability to make informed decisions. This is why you need to be choosy and particular when it comes to metrics.
Run each possible metric that you might measure through an assessment. How will you use the metric? Why will it show whether you’re on or off track? Are there other corresponding metrics that could shed light on the metric?
Spending time on this kind of upfront evaluation will pay off later. Just be sure that you examine your metrics every few months. You may want to decrease or add data points as you move closer to your goals.
2. Take a “big picture” approach to your data
With your metrics in hand, you can start getting data insights. The insights may or may not be valuable, though. Plus, they might not say what you think they’re saying. Believe it or not, sometimes you have to interpret the numbers. This is where stepping back and being able to look at everything from a 35,000-foot view makes sense.
Our company works with many leaders who, in their eagerness to examine the data, haven’t skimmed it beyond the surface. As a result, they’ve sometimes been surprised when they discover that their data is showing red flags — and that they’ve ignored those red flags.
For instance, one of our clients was showing high-profit margins via the metrics and assumed the company was on a serious growth trajectory. Just in case, we poked around a few additional data points. What was really happening was that two or three of the client’s customers were very profitable, but about 10 other customers were dropping in profitability.
The company realized that it had to get to the bottom of why such a high percentage of customers were unprofitable. If their leaders hadn’t been open to the big picture, they could have found themselves without the growth they sought.
Related: How to Collect Digital Marketing Data in 5 Easy Steps
3. Include catastrophe management in your data-driven digital marketing strategy
Catastrophic things can happen to any company. Just ask the countless companies that reported a collective total of 1,802 data breaches or compromises in 2022 per Identity Theft Resource Center. Every time you add a new data entry or endpoint to your workflows, such as a cloud-based software tool, you’re opening the door to being hacked. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t allow fear to shut down your data-driven digital marketing campaigns. Instead, leverage the experience of vendors and partners who’ve seen it all and want to help you avoid being a worst-case scenario.
You can use certain metrics to help you shed light on the unknown and be proactive. Being able to get real-time data on internal and external security protocols, subscription sign-ons and more can help you avoid heartache and headache. Remember, not all catastrophes come from nefarious places.
Another client of ours said their product turnover was 90 days. They built a thriving, data-driven digital marketing strategy around that belief. Orders started coming in, and their metrics, including SEO-created online authority, looked amazing. All except one: fulfillment. They were wrong about the 90-day prediction and couldn’t fulfill orders. Their business tanked because they couldn’t support the growth they sought and we achieved.
Essentially, your job is to unveil buried information so you can grow without faltering. Let others pay the “school of hard knocks” tuition. You have better places to spend your money, like consistently tweaking and honing your digital marketing plan throughout the year.
Getting bigger and better requires that you identify your baseline objectives and then construct data-driven strategies around them. It’s the healthiest way to keep your business ticking and humming straight toward your goals.
Related: A Practical Guide to Increasing Startup Success Through Data Analytics
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The subscription economy has been on the rise and will only continue to grow. With the global subscription eCommerce market expected to exhibit a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 65.5% between 2023 and 2028, it’s not a surprise that so many businesses are looking to pivot to the subscription model.
But in addition to creating opportunities, the subscription economy spike is also causing some challenges for DTC founders — namely, in one area: competitor differentiation. That’s why effective marketing is so important for the growth of subscription brands. And while there isn’t a one-size-fits-all subscription marketing strategy, there are a few common mistakes that ecommerce brands would be wise to avoid.
Related: How to Identify and Launch a Subscription Model in Your Existing Business
1. Taking a set-and-forget approach to subscriptions
One of the biggest errors subscription brands make is jumping to marketing techniques before considering exactly how you want to go to market with your subscriptions. In other words, a set-and-forget subscription model will sabotage any effective marketing strategies. So strengthening your subscriptions is a wise place to start to lay the foundation for impactful marketing.
There are so many options for brands to tailor their subscription programs directly to their customers’ lifestyles and their products’ intended use. This could be a build-a-box, giftable, sequential or prepaid subscription, to name a few.
Assess the needs of your subscribers and how your product is typically used to choose the strongest subscription offering that adds the most value for your customers.
2. Not designing a subscription-optimized PDP
Your PDP (Product Detail Page) is a highly important part of your eCommerce website, as this is where consumers can directly engage with your product and decide if they want to buy it. The PDP is also where consumers can opt to subscribe — making it a stellar (and logical) spot to promote your subscription program. A costly mistake DTC brands make is creating a PDP that doesn’t effectively display the subscription offering or its related benefits.
There are myriad ways that brands can optimize their PDP — whether it’s by strategically setting subscriptions as the default, clearly displaying savings with a strikethrough, or illustrating the many perks that consumers can access by subscribing. It should be blatantly obvious to consumers why they would benefit from a subscription.
Related: More Restaurants Embrace Subscription Model to Drive Revenue and Retain Customers
3. Underestimating the post-purchase journey
An essential component of subscription marketing is knowing when and how to promote your subscription offering — and it’s a common mistake for newer brands to miss out on optimal chances, particularly after a consumer has made a purchase.
Two obvious cohorts to target are one-time and repeat buyers who have yet to subscribe. Leaning into this subgroup by sending an informative email that outlines the many perks of subscribing can work wonders for growing your subscriber base.
However, communicating with current subscribers — not just one-time buyers — is where the real post-purchase journey can happen. This is a significantly unique component of subscription marketing; it’s equally crucial (if not more so) to advertise to your current subscribers rather than just focusing on acquiring new ones. Forgetting about your most loyal audience is extremely costly; after all, returning customers spend about 67% more than new customers.
Building out a robust customer account portal complete with referrals, loyalty rewards, trending upsells, and exclusive discounts is only step one in maximizing engagement, as you have to ensure that your subscribers are aware of and participating in these engaging touchpoints. Once you have your account portal set up with the LTV-driven features you want, it’s important to lean into messaging that brings subscribers into the portal as much as possible.
One strategy is to invite subscribers via email and SMS messaging to visit their account portals by sending a direct link. Then, in conjunction with this, many brands also choose to send an educational email to inform their audience of the many ways to engage after they’ve subscribed.
4. Keeping Email/SMS marketing impersonal
Your email/SMS strategy is a chance to get highly creative and lean into personalization; it’s not just an outlet for promotions, which is a trap many brands fall into. Some founders are wary of playing up personalization for fear of invading privacy — but most consumers are actually seeking and expecting this kind of individualized treatment from their brands.
83% of consumers reported that they were willing to share information in exchange for a more personalized experience, and 88% of organizations that implemented a personalized approach saw a meaningful increase in sales. In other words, eCommerce businesses that fail to capitalize on this dynamic are missing out on a prime opportunity.
Personalized marketing can vary depending on the type of business you run — but here are some general campaign ideas:
For SMS, this might look like:
- Notifying subscribers about new products they may like
- Sending a personalized birthday message with a special perk
- Sending out order-tracking messages and giving subscribers a chance to manage subscriptions directly in the text thread
For Email, this might look like:
- A more casual check-in sent to engaged subscribers to encourage reviews
- An interactive survey or quiz to collect zero-party data (which can be used to further personalize future messaging)
- An informative newsletter with recent brand updates, including a “you may like” product recommendation section
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Running a one person business is challenging, but we’re here to help you. Tune into our video series, Solopreneur Office Hours, as our expert, Terry Rice, answers your most pressing questions.
Running a one person business is challenging, but it doesn’t have to be confusing.
In our new series, Office Hours for Solopreneurs with Terry Rice, you’ll get your most pressing business questions answered live while also learning from the challengees of your peers. Be sure to tune in on May 31st at 3 PM EDT as he removes all the guesswork around pricing, personal branding, selling your services and more.
Don’t miss out—register now!
About the Speaker:
Terry Rice is the Business Development Expert-in-Residence at Entrepreneur and host of the podcast Launch Your Business, which provides emerging entrepreneurs with the critical guidance needed to start a business. As the founder of Terry Rice Consulting he helps entrepreneurs make more money, save time and avoid burnout. He writes a newsletter about how to build your revenue and personal brand in just 5 minutes per week.
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Walk into any hip startup and what’s the one word you’ll hear echoing across the cubicles and over the Keurig despite best efforts to rein in its use? No, it doesn’t rhyme with luck or hit. This one rhymes with hike and should be wildly familiar to anyone who’s seen the movies Valley Girl or Clueless. Like may sound juvenile, but it has taken over our linguistic nooks and crannies in almost every variety of global English. It appears at the beginning of sentences, in the middle of clauses, and now it even introduces quotes. This expanded use of like is so widespread that news outlets ranging from The Atlantic to Time to Vanity Fair to The New York Times have covered what seems to be its troubling and meteoric rise.
Related: 9 Best Practices to Improve Your Communication Skills and Become a More Effective Leader
But before condemning like as a blight on all that we hold professionally dear, let’s take some time to consider why it might actually serve the greater communicative good. Just maybe, there is more to like than we might at first believe.
Image Credit: Nicolás Ortega
LIKE IS AN INCREDIBLY AMORPHOUS WORD. Even when it’s “appropriately” used, it’s a syntactical workhorse. Primarily, we hear like as a verb, to discuss a fondness for objects or people (“I like ice cream”). As a noun, we have preferences (likes) and their opposite (dislikes). As an adjective, the word is infinitely applicable (swanlike, buffoonlike) to mean “similar to” or “in the manner of.” We also see like used as a preposition, as found in a simile construction (“She has eyes like the sky”) and as a conjunction to embed another clause (“She rode the bike like she was on fire”).
But while these are considered the “appropriate” forms of like, they too have not always been so well received. For example, back in the 1950s, the grammar police were appalled by a cigarette ad that said, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” Prescriptivists of the time denounced this “misuse” of like as a conjunction where, standardly, the word as should have reigned. (“Winston tastes good, as a cigarette should.”) Of course, those people should have been more worried about cigarettes’ long-term effects on our health rather than our grammar.
Nowadays, the conjunction like is so pervasive that its colloquial past is unknown to many of its users — even though our traditional grammar books still label that use as incorrect in formal written English.
Related: Choose Your Words Carefully to Transform Your Mindset (and Your Success)
What people complain about today is the newest type of like. In my college linguistics classes, when I ask the students to name the things that bug them the most about language, like is always at the top of the list — often comically appearing in the very sentence that denigrates it. “I hate how people, like, use like all the time,” they’ll say. Once the offending word is mentioned, the students can’t stop noticing how often it pops up in everyone’s speech for the rest of the class period — and then the rest of the day, week, month, and year. What drives this ceaseless advance? Ask most parents and they’ll probably say it has something to do with adolescent laziness or linguistic rebellion. Ask most employers and they’ll probably say it has to do with a shift from a more formal workplace to a casual, less professional setting.
Ask most linguists, though, and they’ll probably tell you we’re missing the mark.
This new like is what linguists call a “discourse marker.” English has an arsenal of these markers — such as so, you know, actually, oh, um, and I mean — that don’t directly contribute to the literal content of a sentence. Instead, they contribute to how we understand each other by providing clues to a speaker’s intentions. For instance, when I say, “Oh, I finally got a job!” my use of oh is a shorthand way to prompt a listener to mimic my surprise. Discourse markers provide the social greasing of the conversational wheel. Without them, our speech would sound more computerlike. In fact, try not using any. Not only will you find it quite difficult, but others will find you a less appealing speaker.
Related: 4 Expert-Backed Strategies for Improving Your Communication Skills
Discourse markers are by no means new or unusual. Shakespeare made liberal use of them. The epic poem Beowulf even begins with one (Hwæt!), meaning “what” in Old English, which was a signal to the audience that something worth paying attention to will follow. Old English texts from the fifth to 11th centuries are full of the word þa, meaning “then,” which seemed to serve a similar role. By the early modern period (15th through 17th centuries), interjections such as alas, ah, and fie, among others, functioned to give a sense of a speaker’s intentions or emotions (alas, ’tis true). The use of like as a conversational marker, which today’s critics often blame on modern youth, dates back centuries. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites an example from 1778: “Father grew quite uneasy, like, for fear of his Lordship’s taking offence.” It also cites another example from 1840, in a magazine of the era: “Why like, it’s gaily nigh like, to four mile like.”
Like emerged as a discourse marker centuries ago for the same reason that it has become so popular today: It is a surprisingly useful conversational tool.
Image Credit: Nicolás Ortega
TO SEE HOW LIKE COMES IN HANDY even in professional settings, take a sentence like, “I worked for, like, 80 hours.” The like that appears in this example might not seem as if it is serving any strictly necessary role. In fact, it could be deleted and the strict semantic sense of the sentence would remain (“I worked for 80 hours”). But you would lose some of what the speaker intends to convey, a certain linguistic je ne sais quoi. This use of like suggests the speaker is not completely certain of how long they worked (or doesn’t really care to be more specific) but is emphasizing the fact that the work period was impressively long.
Related: The 4 Most Important Words in Leadership Development
We will often state things strongly or weakly in order to persuade a listener about a position we present, or to resist making a strong claim, or even to share useful but potentially not exact information. In our example, “I worked for, like, 80 hours,” the speaker’s intent is to persuade the listener that the work was long and grueling, but probably not that it actually lasted 80 hours. In fact, if taken literally, one might not have much interest in pursuing conversation with someone so obviously in need of alternate leisure-time pursuits.
While often characterized as empty or meaningless in terms of the semantic contribution, such markers can be an important component of what we consider informative discourse. Compare the sentence, “John was, like, 21, when he launched the company” with the roughly equivalent utterance, “John was 21 when he launched the company.” Should a listener know John, and also know that he actually started his company at 22, the conversational import (that he founded a startup at an early age) intended by the speaker may be missed because the listener is more concerned that the sentence violated what they know about John. In linguistics we call this the truth-conditional meaning of sentences. Sarcasm and humor aside, speakers and listeners tend to aim for credibility. Thus, there is a subtle difference added by the use of like that may help a speaker make a point about John launching his company without getting sidelined by information regarding his age that could mess with our truth conditions. One could easily have said, “John was about 21 when he launched the company,” but that comes across as more reserved than carefree and hip.
Related: 5 Tips to Feel More Confident With Public Speaking
Just think about it this way: We hedge and qualify all the time in business. Along with the perfectly acceptable terms “think,” “may,” “possibly,” or “maybe,” like is just another way of expressing degrees of certainty.
Image Credit: Nicolás Ortega
HERE’S ANOTHER WAY that like adds nuance.
My daughter (a model like user) and I were recently talking about a party she attended. When describing a fellow attendee, she said, “She’s, like, one of the popular girls,” and then proceeded to tell me about this tween Amazonian’s death-defying acts of coolness. Now, I am doubtful that my daughter was trying to be vague about the girl’s popularity. Instead, by introducing the noun phrase “one of the popular girls” with like, she was highlighting the point she was trying to make. In other words, she was using like as a linguistic focuser. This function alerts the listener to a speaker’s emphasis or subjective take on a particular aspect of the sentence.
The problem for some is that when like is used in this way, it can seem to show up anywhere. But there is a method to the madness. One study looked at how discourse marker functions of like were deployed by speakers when retelling stories. It discovered that both the original speaker and the listener tended to recycle likes at the same points in the story when retelling it, suggesting that those specific likes really did matter in qualifying or supplementing the meaning. Like it or not (pun absolutely intended), like usage seems to be intentional and essential.
And now the plot thickens. While the above examples demonstrate the power of like as a discourse marker, the usage that seems to really rally the grammar prescriptivists is like as a quotative verb. As in, “I was like, ‘I can’t stand it!’ and she was like, ‘I know! I don’t like it either.'” This form of nonstandard like use seems to be the one people find most difficult to digest, which is unfortunate, because it’s also the most rapidly expanding one in English.
Related: 14 Proven Ways to Improve Your Communication Skills
In contrast to the long history of discourse-marker like, such quotative like use is a fairly recent development, with the OED first noting its appearance in a Time magazine article from 1970, where it was used to report internal dialogue of the speaker: “And I thought like wow, this is for me.” According to like experts, this reference is a throwback to the “Like, wow” phenomenon associated with beatniks in the 1950s and beat/jazz culture in New York City in the 1960s.
The popularity of quotative like use was mainstreamed by the song “Valley Girl” by Frank Zappa, with help from his daughter Moon Unit, in 1982. This song took popular culture by storm, drawing a caricature of the speech style used by girls from Southern California. Along with introducing the iconic phrase, “Gag me with a spoon,” it acquainted many of us with like in both its discourse-marker and quotative functions, helping to accelerate its spread. Still, the song simply reflected, rather than started, an undercurrent already in play well before it came on the scene.
When looking at how this be-like form is most often used, Canadian researchers Sali Tagliamonte and Alexandra D’Arcy find that it occurs most often with first-person narration of inner dialogue (e.g., “I was like” or “We were like”). Their findings echo research from the early 1990s that discovered speakers alternating between say and like to take on different narrating roles — using “they said” when directly reporting someone else’s speech but “I was like” mainly when characterizing their own thoughts or feelings. This suggests that be like is used primarily to help us convey different perspectives while describing a story or an event, perhaps to heighten dramatic tension.
Intriguingly, this rapid uptake and selective replacement of the verb “to say” appears to correspond with a fundamental shift in our narrative style during the latter half of the 20th century. Prior to the rise of be like, our stories were primarily intended as retellings of events. Now, however, we are also interested in narrating our thoughts as if spoken out loud during the moments we are describing. As a result, the focus has moved from strict reportage of the events themselves to our processing of these events. The verb “to say” didn’t sufficiently capture the subjective sensibility this new approach required, which led to the rise of be like, serving to inject first-person reflections. Think of the difference between “Then I said, ‘Hello there!'” versus “Then I was like, ‘Helloooo there!'” To say comes across as a verbatim quote while be like communicates a “something along the lines of” sentiment, and in fact might be taken here to describe what I was thinking rather than anything I actually said. Gradually, these first-person uses of quotative like extended to use with all potential subjects, so that now she can be like, he can be like, and so can they.
Related: Remote-Communication Tips from 7 World Champions of Public Speaking
Not surprisingly, most studies have found a greater use of modern like by younger speakers. But research suggests that it’s increasing among older speakers too, and there’s little evidence that its spread will be halted. Like it or not, like is becoming the new norm.
What does this all mean for you? Whether it falls from the lips of those you work with or even your own, you won’t go wrong being among the first to recognize this new like‘s utility and purpose. It’s especially helpful if you want to connect to millennials and Gen Z, who will find you more appealing and approachable. So, leaders of all sorts should relax about censoring the likes out of their speech or the people they oversee. And for those who remain unconvinced, instead of dismissing it as simply something to eradicate, consider how like has traveled from the innovative edge to become an enormously pervasive and popular feature of speech today — a true linguistic entrepreneur if ever there was one.
What’s not to like about that?
→ From LIKE, LITERALLY, DUDE by Valerie Fridland, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Valerie Fridland.
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The following is an excerpt from Content Is King: The Complete Guide to Writing Website Content That Sells by Laura Briggs, available now at Entrepreneur Bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.
If you’re building a website but are unsure of your audience/buyer persona, you can learn a lot about them through survey research. You can hire survey companies to help you get direct feedback from your target market and learn more about what is most important to your audience. With Google surveys and companies like SurveyMonkey, you pay a specific amount of money for each survey result, which varies from a dime to several dollars per survey completion.
One of the best things about not having an existing audience persona is that you have the chance to be creative. You can also tap directly into the market in real-time and build the data you gleaned right back into your marketing plan.
Related: Ultimate Guide to Using Shopify
If you have the opportunity to use open-ended questions in your survey, you can learn the exact words and phrases that your audience uses. Make sure your survey questions directly request the feedback and information that you need to build this brand persona. You can then use the responses to better understand these demographics and develop an audience content persona. If you have access to your target audience outside of surveys, such as people in your direct network, consider setting up customer informational interviews. These can last 20 to 30 minutes and tell you more about this person’s primary concerns.
What Questions Should I Ask in My Survey or Interview?
Start with basic demographic information about your audience member, such as name, gender, age, location, where they work, job title, industry, and the biggest challenges they face. You might also add questions that drill down further into your specific business type. This kind of data can help you understand where most of your audience members share commonalities.
Related: Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing
How to Learn More About Your Target Audience Through Social Media
Yes, your audience is interested in solving the specific problem you’re presenting, but they are also dynamic people with other interests and concerns. Some of those interests and concerns will be shared by a good portion of your audience. For example, imagine that your ideal audience member is interested in home renovation. You could make a reasonable assumption that they like HGTV or visit BobVila.com. That same person might also be interested in flea markets or other DIY projects. Adding these kinds of guesses is how you build out a more comprehensive version of your target audience member.
Something awesome about living in the modern era is that someone has probably already done the work of collecting information about your target audience. (We can save the privacy debates for another day.) Hello, big data!
Head on over to Facebook and type into the search bar “interests liked by people who like _______.” Fill in the blank with the name of a competitor or another interest of your ideal audience member.
You’ll get a list of information about your target audience members and other things they like. You can use this material to provide context and also to highlight those other details throughout your copy.
Let’s imagine you’re a closet organization company that found that your audience is also interested in home renovations and DIY projects. But your premise is that they don’t know how to get started with organizing a functional closet. You might use that in a line of copy, such as “Keep your weekends for watching Property Brothers and let us do the heavy lifting. You’ll head into each week with the knowledge that your closet is fully organized and ready for action during the busy work and school days.”
That kind of copy is what makes your audience feel like you’re talking directly to them. It works because you’ve done your research to confirm what they like and their levels of interest.
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How to Use Facebook Audience Insights to Learn about Your Buyer Persona
Facebook audience insights are tools used by online marketers to learn more about the vast data treasure trove that is Facebook. You can look at people who are connected to your personal page or all of Facebook. There is very little reason to look at the information connected to your page audience, especially if you have an audience segment of fewer than 1,000 people. Start by looking more broadly at all of Facebook and then adding differentiating factors to help narrow this down.
Navigate to business.facebook.com/latest/insights/people. In the interests section, type in your industry or other terminology people would use to describe your industry. Then narrow down by demographic information. You can gather a great deal of valuable data in this process. Don’t forget to look at the lifestyle section of the Facebook audience insights to identify goals and challenges of your potential target readers.
Your copy should always be based on your UVP and what is most helpful to your target customers. In this chapter, you learned how to evaluate and describe your audience so you can craft copy about what you can offer to them. In the next chapter, you’ll learn how to incorporate these elements into your content marketing strategy.
Related: What Are Million-Dollar Habits?
Action Steps and Takeaways
Determine whom you serve and how that influences your company’s unique value proposition.
Think about brand value adjectives that can set you apart from your competition and clearly convey what’s most important about your brand.
- Survey your current or prospective customers to learn more about what’s most important to them (or use social media).
- Determine your audience personas for your business.
- Define your unique value proposition.
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When you think of startup funding, you may envision contests with almost no chance of winning or solid venture capitalists who will not be surprised by your concept. “Those who raise millions for their ideas’ implementation are just lucky ones,” you may think. It sounds surprising, but a strong community can help you achieve success much faster and easier.
The explanation is simple: The less a person has to contribute or “risk,” the more likely you are to receive a contribution. In this article, I’d like to share some tips from my own experience that may help you pique the interest of your audience in your solution and turn them into its backers. Each worthwhile idea will find supporters. Believe me.
Related: Who Needs Venture Capitalists When You Can Crowdfund?
1. Make sure your idea is providing a solution
In today’s world, no idea can be completely original, but it’s better if you can come up with a unique solution or significantly improve on something that’s already been made. How did we manage it? We saw the benefits and drawbacks of working in the music industry for a long time and wanted to develop something that would truly bring innovation to the space we know.
We carried out market research prior to building the platform. We researched whether similar initiatives already exist, what they do and the errors they made. Along with estimating the lifetime value of the product, we contrasted our idea with the needs of our target audience. It’s critical to understand whether our project has a solid foundation for the long term.
In our case, we saw the lack of including the fans on the journey and how the number of independent artists skyrocketed, but the way of getting funding for your projects was still limited to signing a label deal. Artists can invite their fans to be part of the journey while giving back to the community of people who have supported them along the way.
2. Show the audience a clear strategy
Be ready to tell the truth. Explain in detail how your platform works, say at least a few words about any possible risks, and show how the money you raise through the power of the community will be used to improve the project and make it more useful for this audience. It’s very important to give people a strong reason to support you.
Why am I emphasizing it so strongly? People are always reluctant to part with money when there is no obvious use for it. Once it is made clear to participants how their money will be used, what features they will have access to and what the ultimate goal is, a significant part of them will be ready to help you crowdfund.
Keeping in touch with your audience is not only about keeping them interested but also about showing how much you value their continuous support.
3. Make it easy to support you
The more clicks required, the less likely people are to join you. So, make the funding mechanism user-friendly. It determines the stability and success of your monetization. Prepare a brief registration instruction, and ensure that the website navigation is simple to understand. People in 2023 value their time and expect everything they use to be convenient.
There are numerous crowdfunding platforms available that are tailored specifically for startups or projects in the Web3 niche. Patreon, SeedInvest Technology, GoFundMe and other similar sites are examples. I will not recommend any particular platform, but I will share some criteria that will assist you in selecting the most convenient instrument.
First, look for a solution that can be directly integrated into your platform in the form of a button or direct link on the main page. Again, convenience is one of the top priorities for successful and predictable funding. Second, choose the one with the most payment methods integrated. Even the most ardent supporters of your idea may abandon you if they have to make multiple transactions to pay you. Third, because there are so many fake website versions out there, don’t forget to educate your users on how to spot a fraudulent link or platform page.
Related: 9 Steps to Launching a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign
4. Don’t forget to spread the word
When choosing the best way to share your initiative, think about which social media networks or media outlets your target audience uses to get ideas. Participate in networking and exhibitions. Making connections with thought leaders and others in the field of the industry you’re looking to enter multiplies your chances of success tenfold.
We played more than one instrument at once. We worked hard to improve our social media, pitched our idea to top journalists and went to events where we could meet potential investors on a regular basis.
The specific marketing plan you use will depend on the market you are trying to reach, your target audience and the services you plan to offer, but the following tools will come in handy 99% of the time:
Develop your media relations: Promotion through news releases in global and specialized media is beneficial at both the project’s infancy and maturity stage. They will create “hype” in the first instance and enhance your expertise in the second. Create articles for publications, comment on current events, participate in interviews, and share announcements in the media and on the project website.
Utilize advertising services: Set up targeted ads on social networks trusted by your primary audience, use retargeting, and connect with influencers. Brand ambassadors who are thought leaders in your chosen niche will lend credibility to your project.
Educational content: Blockchain, Web3 and other complex topics require user education. This task can be easily completed with high-quality content: a site blog, FAQ, research, whitepaper, videos (both long and short, like TikToks), podcasts, AMAs and case studies. In this case, the user interaction path with your product might look like this: reading a blog post, visiting a landing page, and finally, requesting a demo of your product or leaving a request.
Effective social media marketing: Over time, it contributes to the formation of a community of devoted brand fans. Share news, solicit feedback, introduce the team, post behind-the-scenes content, employ various forms of storytelling, use memes or niche-related jokes and so on. A funnel could look like this: clicking on ads, subscribing to a channel, visiting the site and requesting a demo.
Affiliate marketing: Startup founders frequently do not have enough time to promote their businesses, which is understandable given their other responsibilities. That is why it can be a great option to outsource promotion or launch affiliate programs. The latter allows you to get a predictable result at a predictable price, which is especially important in the early stages when resources are scarce.
Related: 12 Key Strategies to a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign
As you can see, an idea lays the groundwork for a project but does not guarantee its success. Even ideas that aren’t very original can sometimes work because the people who came up with them did a good job of assessing their resources, chose the best ways to market them, and perhaps most importantly, didn’t give up.
My goal was to show you that angel and venture capital investors are not the only sources of multimillion-dollar funding. Millions can be earned through creativity and consistency. You can design your own strategy that will ultimately produce excellent results using the resources I provided from personal experience.
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If you’re a business owner, a lot has happened already this year to make you stop and consider the state of your (and your business’s) money.
Inflation has every dollar shrinking in value, federal rate hikes have made it more costly to borrow, and while recent bank failures may not have impacted your business outright, it certainly caused a justifiable stir.
With all of this going on, my husband and I decided to meet with a mentor and financial consultant who has managed hundreds of millions of dollars in capital over the last 25 years to review our investments.
He pointed out that, while we both have various investments, we’ve primarily been putting our money into something that has paid off many times over standard stock market returns — and that something is our respective businesses.
After that meeting, I concluded it was wisest to invest more into my most reliable asset — my business. Sure, we have a lot of “safe” investments as well, but truly, in the long run, nothing has compared to our businesses in terms of return on investment (ROI).
The biggest investment I’m making is in my marketing: I’m increasing our annual marketing budget by more than 20% this year to over $7 million.
I made this decision based on some hard-won experience I gained surviving two economic recessions. The first (2008), I cut my marketing and we barely survived. The second (2020), I refused to cut our marketing and, as a result, growth in the last three years has averaged 20% after averaging only 5% in the decade previous. I learned that marketing is crucial to not only growing a business when times are good, but essential to survival when times get tough.
If you’re like me and know that your business is your greatest asset, I want to share three marketing principles I have followed and applied in order to strengthen my business and grow revenue despite recessions and economic turbulence.
Related: Why a Recession Is the Worst Time to Skimp on Brand Marketing
1. Use the current economic conditions to your advantage to increase market share
Recessions come and go, and some businesses leave legacies behind that we can learn from. Kellogg is a perfect example of that. In the late 1920s, Kellogg and Post dominated the breakfast cereal market.
When the Great Depression hit, Post responded in fear, reducing expenses and cutting back on advertising while Kellogg did the opposite. Kellogg moved into radio advertising and heavily promoted a new cereal called Rice Krispies.
By 1933, the economy was the worst it had ever been, but Kellogg’s profits increased 33%. Kellogg not only survived the economic crisis but became the leading cereal brand afterward — and has remained in that spot more than 80 years later. In 2017, Kellogg had a 30% market share, with General Mills following at 29% and Post at 18%.
I experienced a similar phenomenon with my business, PostcardMania. In 2008, the recession devastated many businesses. We were heavily affected by the real estate market plummeting since mortgage brokers made up 46% of our clientele. In 2009, an advisor at the time saw how much I spent on marketing every week and said something to the effect of, “We could save a lot of money if we cut back.”
Against my better judgment, I listened and cut my marketing in hope that we could conserve our resources and increase profits, but that made the situation worse. What was a small revenue decline in 2008 (around $150,000) ballooned into a much bigger loss in 2009 — as much as 15% of revenue and well over $1 million.
I made a sharp U-turn and brought my marketing back up to speed as soon as possible, and we recovered by 2010. I vowed to never cut my marketing budget again.
Then in 2020, when the pandemic disabled the economy, I knew exactly which moves to make and maintained my marketing regardless of how rough it got — and it did get rough to the tune of sales being down over 40%.
But guess what my competitors did? Exactly as I did in 2008 — they froze or reduced their marketing. The difference between 2008 and 2020 was obvious; we grew PostcardMania in 2020, and then business got even better in 2021 and 2022. Since 2019, our revenue has been up 60% (an average of 20% growth per year) after 10 years of averaging 5% growth.
I know it sounds counterintuitive to invest more in marketing when the economy is poor, but history doesn’t lie, and my own experience backs this up. Keep your marketing strong, and your leads and sales will remain strong as well.
Related: 6 Recession-Proof Business Marketing Strategies
2. Choose the marketing channels with the highest ROI to make the most of your budget
So, which marketing channels should you invest in? The answer is simple — the ones that work.
If you aren’t already tracking your marketing closely, commit to starting right now. It’s critical that you track what you’re spending and where leads and new customers are coming from so that you know what’s working and what needs improvement.
Once you know which channels yield the highest ROI, you can invest more there to grow your leads, which in turn yields more sales and revenue (and you can tinker with the lower-performing tactics until they’re in a good range or pare them back to suit your budget needs).
One of the marketing tactics I find to have a super high return on investment is retargeted mailings. Triggered mail makes the most of every lead by specifically targeting the people who have already shown some kind of interest in your products or services by visiting your website.
Depending on who you want to target, a postcard is automatically printed, addressed and sent within 24 hours of their website visit. Targeting can be based on the length of time a visitor spends on your site, the web pages they visit, the items they put in their shopping cart or a number of other factors.
Because you’re only targeting warm prospects and sending a few postcards a day (rather than thousands at a time like traditional direct mail), the upfront cost of a triggered campaign is relatively low — and that means your ROI potential is much higher.
One of our real estate investment clients, Mark Buys Houses, added retargeted direct mail to their follow-up. They spent $647 to mail just over 100 postcards to his website visitors. As a result, he converted one lead into a sale and made $70,000 in revenue. That’s an ROI of 10,710%!
If you decide to increase your marketing investment like I did, I suggest starting with tactics focused on improving website conversion or follow-up. You’ve already spent money on the hardest part — taking someone from unaware of your business to actually interested — so take the time to find out if investing a few more dollars per lead will translate into more sales. Just don’t forget to track closely!
Related: How to Adjust Your Marketing to Survive a Recession
3. Take advantage of free communication tools to stay in touch with prospects and customers
Not every marketing tactic costs money; some are 100% free. Leveraging free marketing platforms during tough times not only helps your budget, it also helps you communicate better.
First, I suggest perfecting and increasing your email marketing. Tools like Constant Contact and Mailchimp let you send emails for free up to a certain amount. Send out promotional emails that include catchy subject lines and enticing deals to increase clicks. Consider creating an email newsletter that your audience would enjoy reading. It could include valuable information about your industry, tips and tricks, recently completed projects or features about your company to keep your customers connected to your brand.
Second, I recommend freshening up your website with new, SEO-rich content. You can write the content yourself or find a willing team member to help — or even give the latest craze, artificial intelligence (AI), a go. Just provide a prompt, and let AI do the heavy lifting (a.k.a. writing) for you, then go over it afterward and put your own stamp on it using expertise that only you could provide. Blog posts, web pages and other types of articles will not only boost your website in the search engine results on Google, but it will also increase engagement on your website.
Lastly, get more active on social media. Post creative, informative content that draws people in and fosters engagement, like polls or questions. Facebook and Instagram also allow you to list your products and services for free on a shop page. Even though it takes a bit more time and energy to make posts every day, communicating consistently with customers and prospects is invaluable and could lead to increased revenue and positive brand image in your area of expertise.
At the end of this economic downturn, at least you can say that you gave it your all and worked hard to build up your business to the best it can be. Invest in the right areas, and you’ll enjoy benefits that last far beyond the most recent crisis.
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Navigating uncertain and dynamic economic conditions can challenge even the most seasoned marketing teams. When turbulent economic times hit, all parts of a business shift. Top marketing leaders recognize those moments and adjust their plans to meet the business’s strategic needs.
Throughout my career, I’ve learned that marketing has to ebb and flow with those changing conditions. That happens in countless small ways every day.
As leaders, we have to keep our team members on track to deliver the outcomes that matter to revenue. We need complete alignment with the sales strategy and prioritization. We have to focus on sales enablement, effective messaging and positioning, ultimately bringing the right people into the funnel and nurturing them in the right way.
It’s also crucial to keep a strong eye on customer marketing and engagement. It’s important to be laser-focused on ensuring your customers stay your customers.
Markets can change quickly, affecting buying cycles and leaving marketers in unpredictable situations. Executing any strategy during those times is like riding a rollercoaster. You can expect a lot of twists and turns.
However, marketers can enjoy a successful ride if they stick to three tried-and-true strategies that have served me well, no matter the economic conditions.
Related: 5 Marketing Strategies That Work Even in Uncertain Times
1. Remain approachable
Marketing leaders, and marketers in general, need to stay approachable at all times, but particularly during uncertain economic conditions. Fostering open communication and encouraging feedback ensures everyone is working toward a common goal, comfortable sharing their opinions and building a culture of trust and collaboration.
From a people perspective, marketing leaders have access to a ton of information, and we sometimes forget how tough times affect our team members. Communicate with them. Be transparent so they understand the circumstances and the business strategies. It’s okay to talk about heightened expectations or where improvements are urgently needed.
From a strategic perspective, remaining approachable allows people to provide early indicators of things that aren’t working so you can get ahead of them. Hold regular one-on-one meetings with team members to hear their concerns and ideas.
Marketers have to be out front, and they need support from all the business functions around them. You’re building consensus, socializing messaging and driving strategy. To do that in a way that really delivers value, you have to always adjust to input.
By listening and learning, you will create an environment of trust, which leads to better decision-making and stronger strategies. If you’re not approachable, people won’t give you that crucial feedback.
2. Operate with a mindset of experimentation
Marketers must be willing to experiment and try new things, even in uncertain economic conditions, to ensure companies remain agile and can respond quickly to resource shifts. Operating with a mindset of experimentation can mean testing new messaging, trying different marketing channels or developing new content types.
But you can’t experiment your way out of a bad product fit or a low addressable market. Sometimes the business needs to redirect its resources toward strengthening the product or technology to improve market fit.
Marketing leaders shouldn’t overlook that. Cutting back marketing spend to divert toward strengthening other parts of the organization will lead to stronger budgets when that product fit is nailed and the addressable market increases.
Related: 5 Ways Your Brand Can Pivot to Thrive in Uncertain Times
3. Be clear on the metrics
Metrics should never be overlooked, whether times are good or bad. A strong understanding of your metrics fuels decisions around marketing spend. Knowing your numbers is the best way to ensure marketing strategies are aligned with business goals and you’re directing your budget toward the right outcomes.
It’s also critical to understand every stage of the sales funnel, customer acquisition costs (CACs) and customer lifetime value (CLV). That information plays a key role in creating powerful marketing strategies.
By calculating the CAC and CLV, you can make more informed decisions about where to allocate marketing budget and which channels best drive customer leads and engagement that results in revenue. That data-driven approach helps marketing teams make the most of their budget and ensures they’re delivering the best possible results for the business.
Absolute clarity about your metrics is the only way to spot the areas that need more attention or aren’t performing at the optimal level.
When conditions are good, marketers always should be thinking, “what if things turn?” Accurate metrics can provide the early insight you need because when turbulent times arrive, it’s almost too late.
Related: How to Manage and Maximize Your Marketing Budget During Times of Economic Uncertainty
Navigating uncertainty
Navigating uncertain and dynamic economic conditions is always a challenge. But by focusing on remaining approachable, experimenting where you can and prioritizing metrics, you can emerge from turbulent times in an even stronger position.
Marketing is never a straight line, but we can — and should — have the agility to quickly shift course and the acumen to execute strategies that deliver stability during the toughest times.
Working in marketing during turbulent economic times may be a rollercoaster, but the ride is always worth it.
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