Edition #7 - Becoming a Digital Marketing Lead + Monzo’s Growth Strategy

If you haven’t heard the news (yet), I’ve just joined Muzz (series-A, YC-backed, Muslim dating app), as their Digital Marketing Lead. 

Change is the only thing guaranteed, and I’m excited about it. It’s a big responsibility, and I know I can help them. 

Reminds me of a compelling scene in Spiderman…

My role primarily focuses on leading marketing channels such as Performance Marketing, App Store Optimisation and SEO/Website - which correlates somewhere between awareness/acquisition, eventually… how it affects overall growth, beyond the conversion.

Still early days and I’m just settling in, mainly acting as a sponge. Slowly but surely, I’ll aim to positively impact my team, and the company, while sharing my learnings directly with you. 

So far, here are my top 5 insights integrating into my role:

• 90% of my output is NOT based on skill, but character AND working well with people. Get good at understanding and connecting with yourself/people, and the rest becomes easier.

• Counteracting the previous point, skill DOES matter in other areas. When you have to collaborate with cross-functional teams (60-80+ employees), having a basic understanding of how they work, and the technicalities of their processes, vastly helps you glue things together.

• When you have a great product like Muzz, which genuinely has a positive impact and has found product-market fit, growth is easy, but fundamentals still matter. Sustainable > Scalable growth.

• It’s not the best product that wins though, it’s the best product communicated well that does - just think Apple (not the first touch-screen, app-based mobile device), Nike (Adidas had a bigger market share pre-1980s) and Disney (beat bigger studios in their own game). And that’s where marketing’s value comes in. 

• Leadership starts with self-leadership. If I cannot lead myself (emotions, thoughts, output), how can I expect to lead others? 

In the meantime, today’s Edition #7 of the Futurist Marketers newsletter will be as juicy and high-impact as ever. 

Buckle up, grab a cup of coffee - let’s get it!

Monzo’s Growth Strategy

Want to learn how Monzo scaled their growth over the past several years? Download the report HERE. Topline insights below:

• They built a great product, better than its many competitors (mobile-first, modern UI, tech-driven)

• They built a community to help improve the product and its virality, through using their own Monzo-API, Monzo Forum and Facebook Groups (attracting users, talent and general interest from the public)

• Branding as a differentiator: their Coral Red bank cards were instantly recognisable and noticeable for the uninitiated. They tapped into the realms of Youth Culture by utilising social media #s and content marketing

• Balancing their marketing spend upon the payback period of their newly acquired customers (scale spend when your payback period justifies your CAC)

• Adding financial incentives to referral schemes (not anything new here in the world of banking)

PS. The resource is from publicly available data and from the perspective of Charlie Bevan

Source: Boulder

Meta’s Online Marketing Summit

I've attended Meta's Online Marketing Summit (2024) event recently, and many exciting changes are coming to the Meta Ads platform. In the below video, I'll mention topline insights I've extracted from the various webinar videos including:

- Collaborating with AI

- Relying on Meta's AI and Machine Learning algo's (aren't we all?)

- The Value of a Performance Marketers/Meta Ads Specialist in 2030 (it's not what you think)

- Meta UI and Feature changes (predictions + facts)

- Brand vs Direct Response Performance Marketing 

- The Power 5 (best practices for managing campaigns in Meta Ads)

- Meta's focus on collaborating with their clients (Agencies, Brands)

Watch Meta's Online Marketing Summit HERE

Google Delays Phasing-out 3rd-party Cookies (again)

It looks like Google may have been overtly aggressive in giving into respecting user privacy, that they are now delaying the removal of 3rd-party cookies for the 3rd time. No pun intended.

I predict that this WILL happen, and while it may affect most advertisers (especially ones who rely on DSPs), Google does have a goldmine… its vast amounts of data beyond cookies.

Are you ready? Make sure to start thinking about the areas below:

• Collecting/utilising 1st-party data

• Complying with the continued focus on privacy (GDPR anyone?)

• Planning more contextual-based targeting/media planning

• Learn about Google’s Privacy Sandbox

• Know your attribution models and windows inside and out (organic + non-organic)

Source: Search Engine Land

TikTok and the Power of Multilingual Ads

As the world becomes more unified, the English language has primarily been the go-to language, even for countries that may prefer reading ads in their native lingo. 

With TikTok’s new report, it emphasises the opportunity value of, not just using the local language of a country but meshing it with English, hybrid-style.

Topline insights:

• Most people are multilingual and multicultural, so why don’t we adapt our marketing messaging in the same way?

• By 2060, Hispanics will be a third of the population, actively using social and digital platforms for personal and brand interactions.

• Spanish voiceovers in TikTok ads significantly improve brand perceptions, connection, engagement, and consideration among bilingual users compared to English-only ads.

Source: TikTok

Google I/O 2024 (How it Affects Marketers)

“Google is fully in our Gemini era”

Google just had their yearly I/O event this May 7-9, and while mostly designed for developers, we marketers should get the jist of some of the announcements:

• Improvements in Gemini 1.5 pro will get better and more consistent performance (Moore’s law anyone?)

• AI improvements in Google Suite, from meeting and email summaries to contextual understanding of physical environments

• Focus on Search Generative Experience and making it feel like an experience when you're searching + quick overviews for answering your questions (US only for now…)

Will close off with the fact that the secret to further utilising and unlocking the value of AI is by asking better questions. That’s a concept I’ve developed recently, rather than prompting chatGPT like this:

“What is XX and how would you XX for XX?”

I now rephrase my prompt with slightly more context and making sure it is unbiased:

“I am XX looking to [goal], give me [pros and cons] of doing [goal], and how are other competitors doing XX. Are there other aspects I need to think about?”

In life, you get better answers, when you get better at questioning.

Source: Google + 17-minute video summary HERE

Worthy Reads

• LinkedIn testing Premium Company Page subscription with AI-assisted content creation. Source: Techcrunch

• X Streamlines Ad Setup with AI Targeting. Source: X

• Meta’s Llama 3 (AI-capability). Source: Meta 

• X/Twitter will charge new users to post. Source: The Independent

• Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu. Source: The Verge

• How the Google-Reddit partnership impacts brand management. Source: Search Engine Land

• Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you. Source: Google

Rapidly Upskill and Future-proof Your Marketing Journey at Futurist Marketers

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