Happy New Year! Our 2022 prediction: TV ads will get more like TV. 🔮

In December, Peloton revived Mr. Big for a (now-deleted) ad, and Duolingo ran an ad riffing on Emily in Paris.

Next up: Succession’s Kendall Roy promoting bitcoin? We see it… 

In this issue: 

• The new B2B playbook

• Santa’s signature sneakers

• Enterprises’ dark side

EXPERT Q&A

4 New Year’s resolutions for B2B marketers

B2B doesn’t have to mean Boring2Boring. But if you’re in B2B marketing, you know sometimes… it does. 

Jason Bradwell, writer of B2B Bite and host of B2B Better,  often sees B2B teams reuse “overplayed tactics and strategies that worked really well 20 years ago.”

But a new generation of buyers is emerging: 74% of 21- to 40-year-old knowledge workers play a role in their companies’ buying decisions, according to a new study.

Want to reinvigorate your B2B marketing in 2022 — and impress them? These four resolutions can help, Bradwell said. 

Ask, “Is this worth a press release?”

If you’re alerting the press about “very mid-level new hires” or an “incremental feature update,” rethink your team’s approach. 

“You can do that without spending thousands of dollars on getting it out [on] PR Newswire,” Bradwell said.

Explore typically B2C channels, like TikTok.

It’s not for every company, but organic TikTok has more B2B possibilities than you think, Bradwell said.

Consider Doosan, a construction equipment manufacturer. On its TikTok, which Bradwell calls “awesome,” construction equipment lip syncs, dances and hops on the “In the Air Tonight” drum solo. 

To date, it has 180K+ followers and 2.4M likes. Strong engagement!

Reexamine legacy live events’ ROI. 

If historically, your company has spent six or seven figures hosting a once- or twice-yearly trade show, the pandemic already shook up your playbook. 

“If you've been doing your job over the last 24 months, you've been activating new channels at a fraction of the cost,” Bradwell said.

Reconsider your live events if you’re seeing diminishing returns — or if digital channels simply performs better.

Embrace the power of The Office (and pop culture).

Recently, training app company Trainual ran an ad on Facebook and Instagram starring the actors from The Office who play Kevin, Stanley, and Merideth. In character, sort of.

It was a slam dunk, earning 32.8M impressions and bringing in 2K new accounts in a month.

Not every marketing team should collab with Kevin, but “tap into pop culture and nostalgia,” and you can connect with prospects off the clock, Bradwell said — not just via workday webinars and emails. 

Our takeaway?

It’s not safe to play it safe in B2B marketing anymore.

A new generation of digital natives has fresh ideas about what’s professional — and boring. Impressing them is the only long-term marketing strategy.

TWEET TREAT

How Jordans transcended ads

Great question, Tina. We honestly haven’t seen a paid campaign for Jordans… ever.

That’s clearly not because Nike’s hurting for cash — they made ~$50B in 2021. So why is it?  

Jordans are a household name.

They’ve been around for 30+ years — the first Air Jordans launched in 1985 —  and kickstarted (heh) sneakerhead culture. 

They don’t need paid promo in the same way a startup does.

Superstars promote them. 

Michael Jordan is the tip of the iceberg. The Jordan brand also teams up with celebrities on limited edition Jordans — from Russell Westbrook to Travis Scott. 

Celebrities also just wear them on red carpets because they’re trendy. For free.

Exclusivity creates buzz. 

Nike often releases limited-edition Jordans on its SNKRS app — and they sell out fast. 

In fact, resellers often use checkout bots to buy up new releases in bulk before humans can complete their online orders.

“Exclusivity is a driving force in popularity,” Rich Bird, owner of sneaker resale shop Home Court, told MarketerHire.

Our takeaway?

Jordans don’t need print ads anymore, thanks to the brand’s (and its fans’) star power. 

But creative this good still pays off, in earned Twitter traction (30K RTs!) and merch sales.

SMALL BITES

Market-language fit, enterprise marketing, and that PBR tweet…

Web3 could further decentralize advertising — but is that a good thing?

Google’s New Year’s resolution: compete with TikTok via multimedia search. 

Shopify’s SMB-ally brand (and a pandemic boost) made it the everywhere store. 

Finding language-market fit can boost conversions up to 40%. 🤯 

This year’s food trend forecast: mushrooms, seaweed and edible packaging. 

Martech’s theme for 2021 was integration and aggregation.

Bad news: most online A/B tests change very little. 

Crypto.com airdropped NFTs to people who spotted hidden QR codes in an ad. 

For Expensify’s CEO, marketing to enterprises isn’t worth it. 

Interest in sports betting grew 12% in the US in 2021. 

Pabst Blue Ribbon started 2022 with a strategy that raised SMM eyebrows.

SPONSORED

Here’s a fix for marketing reporting snafus.

It’s a statistician! It’s a data analyst! It’s a forecaster!

It’s MarketerHire’s newest role: the marketing analyst. 

Wait — what’s a marketing analyst?

Marketing analysts are data interpreters with marketing knowledge who skip the public-facing work to focus on…

• Taking reporting off your team’s hands
• Collecting, centralizing and analyzing marketing data
• Building role-specific analytics dashboards 
• Figuring out attribution in the privacy-first era

And if you’ve ever struggled to find data in your organization’s mess of spreadsheets, you probably need one. 

FROM OUR BLOG

3 reasons to ask “if not for” questions

Kat Cole, president and COO of nutrition startup Athletic Greens, knows how to hire marketers for growth. 

In a decade as COO and president of Focus Brands — the parent company of Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s and 6.8K+ others — global branded retail sales grew to $1B. 

When hiring marketing leaders for growth, Cole recommends asking fill-in-the-blank questions like, “if not for [blank], it wouldn’t have succeeded in my last role.” Here’s why. 

They identify the best culture and systems matches.  

Knowing “how [someone’s] capabilities would translate in a different structure and environment” is crucial to making a strong hire, Cole said.

Someone who thrives at a startup might not produce excellent work at a mature enterprise. 

They can inspire you to invest in new tools or roles.

A candidate might make a good case for a role you hadn’t considered hiring for. You could also end up finding a stellar new project management tool or game-changing SEO software. 

They screen for humility.

Asking “if not for” questions gives candidates an opportunity to share credit for their successes. 

If they can’t do that, there’s a chance they won’t be able to own up to mistakes, either.

DATA SNACK

The top 5 e-comm channels of 2021, by web traffic (and market share)

These are e-comm’s Big 5, according to SEMRush’s year-in-review report, if you rank by average monthly website visits. 

It’s an interesting metric. We’d usually rank them by market share, which gives you, according to eMarketer: 

1. Amazon
2. Walmart
3. eBay
4. Apple
5. Home Depot

Combine the two lists, though, and it leads to some interesting marketing insights, like… 

Amazon is KING. 

However you slice it, Amazon wins e-comm — it has 3X the traffic of its closest competitor, and ~6X the market share. 

Amazon reaches people where they shop. And convert. 

Marketplaces get more traffic than brand sites. 

The most-visited e-commerce sites are marketplaces, which makes sense — every merchants’ self-promotion doubles as platform promotion. 

Cross-listing your product on these sites (as long as they have good recommendation algos) can fill your top of funnel. 

But Apple’s still got major market share. 

Apple is the opposite of a marketplace: It sells a few pillar products for a high price (Airpods Pro: $249?!) and ranks fourth on market share. 

Dominating a premium niche — and investing in brand — works! 

Our takeaway? 

The big three of e-commerce are self-serve marketplaces — and Amazon and Walmart are channels worth a test. (Could this be the year of Walmart Ads?) 

But Apple shows you can still be a one-brand e-comm giant.

SHARE YOUR BREAD

Share Raisin Bread, win free stuff

Got a friend who'd enjoy Raisin Bread?

If you share your referral link with 'em, you earn tasty treats like these:

Or copy-and-paste your unique referral link to a friend:

https://sparklp.co/cda917ef

Help us bake it better

How did you like this week's Raisin Bread? We'd love your feedback:

Loved | Great | Good | Meh | Bad