This week, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz argued that journalists need personal brands — a pretty common-sense claim! — and it drove other journalists bananas. 

The whole kerfuffle made the marketing industry look… honest?

In this issue: 

• How to market cloned puppies
• 3 LinkedIn flubs to avoid
• The problem with giveaways

Today’s loaf of Raisin Bread is sponsored by… #paid.

Time to say goodbye to insincere shills — and hellooo to content that connects. 

The Age of the Influencer is over. 

It’s time to get #paid.

#paid is where Fortune 500 companies like Visa — and DTC brands like Hydrant — go to work with today’s top content creators. 

Here’s how it works:

1. Tell them what kind of original content converts best for you.
2. They serve up a list of killer creators (pre-vetted, of course) who already love your brand and talk to your target market.
3. You chat with creators, pick your favorites, and get the original content of your dreams.

Ready to level up your #paid ROI?

EXPERT Q&A

The do’s and don’ts of marketing pet cloning

Livestock cloning is so normal that the FDA has a brief on it, but pet cloning? That’s the stuff of science fiction and celebrity whims. 

Barbra Streisand revealed she cloned her dog in 2018 — and the news made The New York Times.

So when ViaGen, formerly a livestock cloning company, pivoted to cloning only domestic pets, they faced a challenge. How could they market their service to people who found it… weird?

Melain Rodriguez, client service manager at Viagen Pets, has spent the past seven years figuring that out — and she shared her tips for marketing a controversial service. 

DON’T rely on vets to sell your product.

People tend to trust medical professionals when it comes to flea medicine. 

But when ViaGen went to vet conferences and asked vets to help them educate people on cloning, those conversations didn’t drive sales. 

Turns out pet cloning isn't a medical decision. It's an emotional one.

DO collaborate with #petfluencers.

In 2017, Rodriguez attended a conference called BlogPaws. At the time, she didn’t really understand that pets could be influencers.

Then she met the owner of petfluencer Bruce Wayne — a chihuahua with 55K+ followers — and a partnership was born. When Bruce Wayne’s owner announced she’d cloned her dog, commenters asked a lot of questions. 

Influencers turned out to be the best educators on ViaGen’s product. 

DON’T offer discount codes.

Cloning with ViaGen costs $50K, a price tag that “scares a lot of people away,” Rodriguez said. 

But when ViaGen’s first influencer partner offered followers a discount code, “it really didn’t do as well as expected,” Rodriguez said. “People didn’t know what to do with that.” 

ViaGen’s sales funnel can be years long, and discount codes rushed people to make a purchase before they were ready. 

DO highlight the low initial costs.

When influencers and celebrities get media coverage for cloning their pets, Rodriguez often gets a surge of calls from regular people, asking how much the service costs. 

“I never start with $50K,” Rodriguez said. “We have to start at the bottom.” So she tells them about ViaGen’s cell banking service, which starts at $500. 

That’s something lots more pet owners can afford, and then cloning will always be an option down the road. 

Our takeaway?

When you’re marketing an expensive, controversial product, industry awareness is more important than brand awareness — and influencers are your friend. 

People eventually come around to the fact that  “there’s nothing weird about a cloned animal,” Rodriguez said.

TWEET TREAT

RIP to IG GAs ☠️

Monica Grohne, founder of menstrual wellness brand Marea, discovered this the hard way after her brand launched an Instagram giveaway. 

A playbook losing its luster

Much like the Kardashians’ infamous giveaways — which always involve Scott Disick? — Marea’s giveaway asked users to:

• Follow 10 brand accounts on Instagram

• Like the announcement post

• Tag friends in the comments

The prize? A $500 bundle of menstrual care products. 

“It’s flopping,” Grohne tweeted.

The giveaway catch-22 

Giveaways come with a tangle of pros and cons — so they’re not easy to pull off or give up.  

• PRO: They boost organic follower count. That “builds trust and is important for a [brand’s] validation” Grohne noted — though some view followers as a vanity metric. 

• CON: They hurt engagement. They attract deal-seekers unlikely to engage with future posts (or buy). 

• CON: Instagram’s algorithm penalizes them. Or so it seems — though it didn’t always. 

Our takeaway?

Instagram giveaways can still do some good if you target existing customers, but they’re losing relevance to collab posts and Reels, Grohne said. 

SMALL BITES

Mushroom leather, advertising hires, and farm marketing…

Stoli has rebranded its Stolichnaya vodka “to represent peace in Europe.” 

Meanwhile, Apple, Harley Davidson and Nike are  pulling out of Russia. 

Can mushroom leather scale to the heights of faux fur? 

The USDA is giving farmers marketing grants to sell their produce. 

Font trends to watch include “svelte serifs” and “throw-up.” 

Get ready for more brands to enter the mental health conversation. 

Vulgar restaurant marketing doesn’t always work.

LinkedIn now offers new ways to “positively represent… career breaks.” 

The cost of virtual land in the metaverse 2X-ed in H2 2021. 

Advertising added 8.5K+ jobs in February, almost a record-breaking month.

FROM OUR BLOG

3 flubs that lose you freelance leads on LinkedIn

You can get ~10X more organic reach on LinkedIn than on Twitter, so it’s a great place to promote a freelance marketing business. 

Or is it?

If you’re not getting the freelance leads you want from the platform, here are three potential reasons. 

A dry “About” section

If your “About” section is written in the third person, it sets a cold, distant tone — and reads a little like an obituary. 

How to fix it: Rewrite it in the first person, and read it out loud to make sure it sounds conversational.

No impact stats

Regurgitating former job descriptions in your “Experience” section doesn’t hook hiring managers. 

How to fix it: Layer in stats that show you can make a measurable impact. Even NDAs will often let you discuss growth in percentage terms. 

A hidden profile photo

If your profile photo is visible only to your network, you run the risk of looking like a bot — and you’ll get fewer views.

How to fix it: Click on your profile photo and set “visible to” to “public.”

For more tips on LinkedIn profile optimization for freelancers, head to our blog. 

DATA SNACK

February’s most in-demand marketing roles

Brands couldn’t pick just one Valentine in February 2022. We tracked hires from our network of vetted freelance marketers, and found that:

• Social media managers were 30%+ more popular.
• Brand marketers made up almost 5% of total hires. 
• Growth marketers’ share of total hires shrank 14% MoM.

Let’s take a look at what changed from January to February. 

Growth marketing was less popular than usual

Growth marketers are always MarketerHire’s most popular role, and February was no exception — but they made up about a quarter of all hires, down from a third in January. 

Marketing teams were moving to “plug holes rather than build a whole new strategy,” senior growth manager Kaullin Sigward said. 

Brand marketers earned their own slot on the chart 

Brand marketers’ hiring share grew 27% MoM in February to just shy of 5% in February — the most popular they’ve been since August. 

Why? To start 2022, companies invested in brand development before testing out new channels, Sigward said. 

Our takeaway?

Growth marketers dominated February less than previous months — which gave other roles, like paid search marketers and brand marketers, a chance to shine.  

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