HubSpot - First marketing hire at Pinterest

Plenty of Lee’s clients get excited about investing in multiple channels … before they've even identified their audience. That’s a costly mistake.

Start with the customer. Then figure out your positioning and branding. And only after that should you be thinking about where to promote your brand. 

"If you don't speak with your customer, you don't know their needs or motivations," Lee says. "And if you don't know what their needs and motivations are, how can you communicate with them?"

To succeed in any size company, you need to hyper-focus on your customer: Where is she spending her time? You sure it's on IG, or is she sifting through ACOTAR fan-fiction forums on Discord? 

Lee is a big believer in using Slack channels as marketing for startups looking for growth. She's in a few herself, and finds it's a good opportunity to create a sense of community among your earliest customers. 

Ditch the generic "Where to promote my marketing?" blog posts in favor of uncovering the subreddits, Facebook Groups, or Substacks where your audience spends its time.

DATA DIGEST

2024 AI Trends for Marketers

We surveyed 1,000+ U.S. marketers to get into the nitty-gritty with AI: What they're using it for, what saves them the most time, and what feels like total BS.

Here's some of the top stats that blew my mind: 

• 🎨 To the Van Goghs out there: Content creation is the #1 most popular use case for AI (not shocking)... but within content creation, creating images is marketers' fav use of AI. Now that I do find surprising
• 🔌 Shameless plug time: Besides chatbots, the next top AI tool being used is AI-enhanced CRM and marketing tools (and nooo, I didn't rig the survey for HubSpot purposes. That's just the facts.) 
• 📈 Lots of people hopping on the GPT bandwagon: In 2023, only 21% of marketers used AI in their workplaces. Today, that’s up to 74% 
• 💥 Could this be the end? 22% of marketers suspect AI poses a threat to humanity. Gulp 

Intrigued? Check out our full 2024 AI Trends for Marketers. You're welcome.

OPEN TABS

• OpenAI puts the pressure on Google: OpenAI just announced its own AI-powered search engine, SearchGPT, and is looking to challenge the search giant at its core game. HubSpot senior director of global growth thinks SearchGPT isn't that different from ChatGPT-4o, and says, "this feels like a branding exercise, a shot across the bow at Google"
• User-generated chaos: TikTokers falsely claim the fitness bev Celsius has Ozempic in it. My colleague Curt looks at when brands should fight back against outlandish UGC, and when it's better left alone 
• Cookie whiplash: After years of convos about deprecating Chrome's third-party cookies, Google now says it's going to explore a "new path" that focuses on user choice when it comes to 3PC

This week's email was brought to you by Caroline Forsey. Editing by Curtis del Principe and Laura M. Browning.

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