#74 The Least Boring Weekend Newsletter

March 26, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Good Morning readers! ☕

Have a Netflix and chill weekend! 🆒

Creators can now add shopping lists to their TikTok films using Instacart's new 'Shoppable Recipes' tool.🍔

Instacart announced the launch of a new "Shoppable Recipes" feature, which will include new product integrations with TikTok and Hearst, which owns magazines like Delish and Country Living. 😋

Select TikTok food artists can now use the Shoppable Recipes feature in their films thanks to a TikTok Jump integration. TikTok Jump is the short-form video app's third-party integration tool.⛏️

Almund's newsletter will let you in on all kinds of tips for D2C brands and much much more. 

Alright, so let's get right to it! 

This newsletter is going to dive into :

👈Bored Apes NFT startup Yuga Labs raises seed round at monster $4B valuation

🌏  Meta Files Trademarks for Crypto Tokens, Wallets, Exchanges

👌 Product Marketing—A Killer Strategy Inside

📜 Top reads for this week

👩🏻‍💼 Plenty of jobs awaiting you!

So, scroll down already to THE VERY END & read up on what's yet to come your way!

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D2C x CRYPTO

Yuga Labs, the firm behind the multimillion-dollar monkey JPEGs that many NFT doubters despise, revealed Tuesday that it had secured $450 million from Andreessen Horowitz at a $4 billion value. (Woah)😮

The Miami-based NFT firm behind Bored Apes Yacht Club has never raised money before, even though the startup has long attracted the attention of venture capitalists looking to support a big 🔎participant in the NFT craze.

Yuga Labs is extending its stake in the market.🛒 The business revealed earlier this month that it has purchased the assets of popular NFT projects CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs.

The company has also recently launched ApeCoin💰, in which the founders and executives have a significant investment.🕵️

 On its first day of trading, the token amassed a multibillion-dollar market cap. 👒

The company plans to leverage this momentum into its version of the metaverse, dubbed "Otherside," which will include avatars from a variety of different NFT initiatives.

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Product Marketing—A Killer Strategy Inside)

Subject Lines:

1. Knock knock! A Product Marketing strategy awaits you →

We’re picking it up right where we left this Wednesday!

So now that you know all about the fundamental principles of product marketing, its importance, and essential details that need your attention when curating a marketing plan, we’re here to tell you how you can get started on one today! 

🎯 Identify Buyer Personas & Target Audience

There are always outliers in your audience, people you didn’t consider targeting when creating content but they make use of your product in a way you never imagined. But you cannot consider every edge case when working on crafting your product marketing plan. Understand your target audience and work on designing a plan keeping them in mind. This would give you better results to get started with. 

A helpful tip: use templates to create personas to help keep your team on the same page. 

📊 Set Goals & Metrics To Track

You know us, we love our numbers!

If you’re developing a marketing plan without goals or metrics to track, you’re shooting in the dark. Sit with your marketing team to understand the short-and-long-term goals of the product marketing campaign along with the metrics you would need to track and analyze before, during, and after the campaign launch. 

📋 Identify & Analyze Your Competitors 

No marketing strategy brainstorming session is complete without a competitor analysis. Identify your direct (and indirect) competitors and analyze their history of marketing strategies across all channels possible. You can learn through their experience to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes. 

📜 Determined Product Positioning To Craft Your Story

It’s all narrative here…

What does your product do? What issues does it solve? Who is it designed for? Answer all these questions through your story and you’d be surprised by the number of people willing to listen to you. 

🛠️ Develop A Plan

Once you’ve got the gals, metrics, and audience in place, it’s time to address the elephant in the room—the strategy itself.

Identify the platforms you’d advertise your product on, work on ads and creative content for the same, and work on pre-deployment tasks, such as optimizing your profiles. Once you’re ready, hit the launch button!

🗣️ Connect With The Sales Team Daily

Once you’ve launched your product marketing plan, actively connect with the sales team to understand the customers that are reaching out and investing in your product. You’d want to know if your campaign is reaching the right audience and how they’re interpreting it all. 

Keeping your product relevant is one of the most important tasks after your product launch strategy has been in action. If your customers have invested in your product or service and they don’t see it evolving to meet their constantly changing needs, updating to make their user experience better, or modifying to provide an expansive cross-platform experience, they’d surely drop off. To avoid losing your customers, consider seeking feedback and working on it. 

Want to see it all in action? Here you go…

#1 Zoom

It’s impossible to think about the pandemic as a working professional and miss out on Zoom. They had to quickly adapt to the ever-increasing bandwidth of users, adapt to security concerns, and change their product to accommodate several new user personas.

#2 Apple 

From product packaging to messaging, Apple’s got it all in the bag; need we say anything more? They provide a seamless experience and their product marketing messaging reflects the same which gives their customers a holistic experience. 

#3 MailChimp

The growing community of users and active users do help with their morale, but MailChimp has been resilient to the competition they face. Their product messaging is strong and causes everyone to gravitate towards them automatically. 

So there you have it! A great product marketing strategy will be ready for you in no time. To have a truly successful marketing plan sketched out, ensure you’ve hit all the sweet spots with your product for it to work well together. 

Shoot us a message if you’d like our tips on an important aspect of eCommerce marketing. Until then. See you soon!

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WHAT’S COOKING, HUH?

Mark Zuckerberg's tech business looks to be focusing on new 🆕cryptocurrency-related ventures.

On Friday, Meta, previously Facebook📒, submitted eight trademark applications for its logo, covering a wide range of digital uses such as cryptocurrency tokens🎫, wallets👛, and exchanges.

Six of the trademark applications specifically mention bitcoin and blockchain-based technologies. So, what does all of this mean? Meta recently revealed that one of its most popular products, Instagram, will be integrating NFTs. 

Zuckerberg stated at the SXSW Conference that Instagram users will be able to mint their digital avatar's apparel as NFTs.📷

 NFTs would be covered by Meta's wide filings that cover any "crypto tokens" because they are distinct crypto tokens that exist on a blockchain like Ethereum and imply ownership. This would enable Instagram and Facebook to implement a comparable NFT profile image feature to Twitter.🐦

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TOP READS FOR THIS WEEK

🎡Google Play to pilot third-party billing option, starting with Spotify

📬Twitter Finally Updates DM Search To Let You Search For Old Messages

📷Instagram launches chronological and ‘favorites’ feeds for all users

📰Russia's communications regulator blocks Google News in the country

🔵Bigblue raises $15 million for its D2C order fulfillment service

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In need of a  job? We’ve got plenty awaiting you!

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CHOOSE SUCCESS below and have a great week! ‘Get that D2C business runnin’.