This week’s most important Marketing News

​​ELON MUSK BOUGHT A BIG STAKE IN TWITTER AND ALMOST JOINED THE BOARD​

This was fun and dramatic, as many things to do with Elon are. He almost joined the board, and then didn’t. But as majority shareholder, his influence will still change Twitter.

How might Twitter change?

For one, Elon has called himself a “free speech absolutist.” He’s criticized Twitter’s policies and recently asked what should be done if Twitter is not adhering to free speech principles. So he might work toward change on that front.

One sure change

​Twitter is testing an edit button. There’s debate about if Elon had anything to do with this (odds are, it was happening no matter what). More importantly, there’s been talk about how an edit button could be used and abused.

I’m guessing the edit button will come with some safety protocols to keep people accountable for whatever they originally posted, like saving the original post’s text somewhere and only allowing edits for a few minutes.

​GOOGLE’S JOHN MUELLER SAID THAT AI-GENERATED CONTENT CAN BE FLAGGED AS SPAM​

Rohan Chaubey asked what Google’s official policy was for AI-generated content.

Ultimately, John (official Google rep) said: AI writing can be considered spam, which you can get in trouble for.

If you use AI, use AI + humans : You need quality content, and you aren’t getting that directly from a machine. You could use AI stuff as a step in your content creation process, but you still need humans doing their thing with the content. This tracks with Google’s official policies as well, which only condemns automatically generated content that HAS NOT been edited by a human.

​I​NSIDER INFO CLAIMS NFTS ARE COMING TO FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM​

A leaked memo mentioned that Meta is piloting NFT posting and sharing on Facebook in May. We care because NFTs can be used in marketing, and having other platforms adopt NFTs could impact how they’re used and adopted.

​THERE HAVE BEEN A BUNCH OF GOOGLE ADS BUGS LATELY​

That link 👆 will help if you’re wondering if something is an official bug, and if they’re working to fix it.

​GOOGLE’S NEW ‘MULTISEARCH’ FEATURE LETS YOU SEARCH USING TEXT AND IMAGES AT THE SAME TIME​

This is a Google-app thing, not a Google-on-your-computer thing. But it is pretty cool for a scenario like this: your friend has a white dish set you like but you don’t know where to buy them.

So, you take a picture and upload it to visual search. BUT you actually want those dishes in grey (instead of white), so then you add the text “gray” to the visual search (the picture). And it will look for a web page with an item similar to what’s in the picture AND contains “gray” in the page content.

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RESOURCES

#jesspicks: This is a useful and packed newsletter each week. The content is geared toward entrepreneurs, but plenty of the ideas and resources are great for anyone in the modern workplace.

​PICK Chart: A visual way of prioritizing projects or ideas.

TWO MESSAGING TACTICS TO GET YOU MORE CONVERSIONS

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I have a middle-aged-man crush on Dan Pink. All marketers will benefit from watching his MasterClass. Here are two useful concepts I learned from him.

FEWER CHOICES = MORE PURCHASES

A STUDY TO PROVE IT: Psychologists tested out two versions of a jam-tasting stand. The first version showcased 24 varieties of jam. The second offered less jam flavors—only six.

Here’s what they noticed:

1. More people visited the stand with more flavors.
2. However, people were 90% LESS LIKELY to buy jam when they visited the many-flavored stand.

Bottom line: people were more likely to buy jam when they were offered fewer choices.

Dan concludes, “Choice is valuable, but it has a ceiling on it.”​
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PUT IT INTO PRACTICE

Let’s say your company offers cleaning services. Customers can choose from a long list of services. That might be overwhelming.

So, you create three bundles with the services decided for them.

If you’re worried about losing customers who want a different combination of services, make a note that the bundles can be customized.

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PEOPLE OVERVALUE POTENTIAL

A STUDY TO PROVE IT: A Stanford person and a Harvard person put together a few studies to test who people favor when hiring candidates. In one test, people were asked to pretend they were a manager of an NBA team. Then, they were asked to evaluate two different players on their team.

They were shown:

• Stats for how a rookie was projected to perform the next five years
• Stats for how a veteran had performed the last five years

Participants showed a clear preference for the rookie’s potential than the veteran’s real stats.

Potential has uncertainty, and a lot of times people fill in uncertainty with what they want to see.

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PUT IT INTO PRACTICE

Make a list of potential outcomes your customers could experience when they:

• Start using your product
• Switch from a competitor to you
• Start buying more from you

Then, look for places to display those messages (email campaigns, landing pages, blogs, ads, etc.).

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P.S. This old newsletter covers three other lessons I learned from Dan, if you want more stuff like this 👆.

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INTERESTING STUFF

🍟 Wendy’s and Chipotle are trying things out in the metaverse. It was interesting to hear how brands might use that wild west.

🖼 Reddit set up an art project for the world. Each user was given one pixel to paint with about every five minutes. After a few days, we had a giant piece of art that pretty much encompasses what the internet means: bringing people together and pitting people against each other.

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LET’S GET VISUAL