Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner...
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The weekend is almost here, Alluser! Before you unplug, here's one last round of insights and updates. Whether you read them now or save them for later, you won't want to miss these.
In today's edition:
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A rundown of the latest tools and features from YouTube
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A customer-led marketing strategy that improves revenue
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Marketers' AI adoption trends and practical applications: Insights from Michael Stelzner
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🗞️ Industry news from Anthropic, LinkedIn, and more
30 Tools and Features Announced by YouTube
YouTube announced a massive rollout of tools that could redefine how marketers approach video content.
In his latest video, Nick Nimmin explains the whole list so you know which make sense for your marketing.
Whether you're experimenting with Shorts, looking to streamline your video workflow, or exploring new ways to connect with your audience, these updates could put serious power at your fingertips.
Even the analytics dashboard is getting an AI boost, turning confusing metrics into conversational insights.
Did you know YouTube will soon let you insert your own ad spots? Watch more here.
Your Competitors Are Using AI Daily. Are You?
While you're considering AI, 60% of marketers are already using it every single day–and 84% ramped up their usage this year alone.
We surveyed 735 marketers to uncover exactly how they're getting ahead with AI (and what's holding the rest back).
Key findings:
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Which tool is overtaking ChatGPT
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The #1 roadblock for non-users
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Real strategies from 16+ industries
Download the data that matters →
Driving Predictable Recurring Revenue With Customer-Led Growth
Customer-led growth is universally applicable across industries and business types.
The primary benefit of customer-led growth for marketers is dramatically reducing the guesswork in strategic decision-making. Your go-to-market strategy becomes significantly clearer, and you no longer have to operate in constant experimentation and hypothesis mode. Instead, you can make well-informed decisions about what to do and how to grow based on genuine customer insights.
Customer-led growth also serves as a framework that bridges cross-functional departments within your company. Marketing, customer success, product development, and sales teams develop a more organized and operationalized view of the customer experience and their specific roles within it.
The full framework shared in this interview centers on a fundamental principle: if your customers are successful, you will be successful.
Prioritizing and Implementing Strategic Changes
The prioritization of change recognizes that not all customer experience improvements deliver equal impact. Rather than jumping immediately into conversion rate optimization or small-scale split testing, the customer-led growth approach focuses first on foundational strategic elements.
Every team that implements this process develops a new messaging strategy because every team learns something significant about their customers and discovers what those customers actually care about most. The messaging guide that emerges from this customer understanding can influence multiple touchpoints including website content, customer onboarding communications, and marketing campaigns.
Following messaging development, teams typically address customer onboarding as the second priority, since this represents the area where most revenue leakage occurs. Industry statistics showing that seventy percent of users log in once and never return highlight why optimizing the onboarding experience creates such a significant impact.
The third priority involves updating website content and user experience. Websites often write checks that the customer experience can't cash, making promises that the actual product experience fails to deliver. Aligning website messaging with the actual customer experience creates much more sustainable lead generation and conversion.
Teams with limited resources should address these priorities sequentially rather than simultaneously. After fixing messaging and customer onboarding, but before making website updates, many teams benefit from pausing marketing campaigns, especially paid advertising efforts. Instead of continuing to drive traffic through misaligned messaging, reallocating resources to fix the foundational customer experience creates much better long-term results.
Only after establishing strong messaging, optimizing customer onboarding, and updating website content should teams resume or compound their marketing campaign efforts. This sequence ensures that more traffic encounters an experience designed around actual customer needs and motivations rather than internal assumptions or outdated understanding.
Identify Critical Milestones in Each Phase of the Customer Journey
The number of milestones within each phase depends entirely on your specific solution, customer complexity, and the intricacy of your product offering. While there's no formulaic approach that dictates four, five, six, or seven specific stages, this example provides a guiding model based on your customer's struggle, their evaluation of your product, and your business growth.
In the struggle phase, customers typically navigate two to three milestones maximum.
The first milestone occurs when they're experiencing the problem in their current environment, struggling with their existing approach. The second milestone, called the interest stage, happens when they enter active solution-seeking mode and discover that you exist, often by landing on your website or learning about your solution through other channels. The interest stage generally concludes when someone takes a significant action like booking a demo, attending a demonstration, signing up for your product, or starting a trial period.
At this point, they transition from general interest to active evaluation of your specific solution.
The first critical milestone in the evaluation phase is called first value, where you demonstrate value quickly enough that customers don't abandon the process. Industry statistics suggest that seventy percent of people who sign up for a product login once and never return, making rapid value demonstration crucial for preventing early abandonment. First value doesn't mean delivering complete value immediately, but rather providing enough value demonstration that customers see the promise of your solution and continue engaging. Various mechanisms can deliver this first value experience, depending on your product type and customer needs.
The final milestone in the evaluation phase is value realization, when customers fully adopt your product and experience their eureka moment. At this point, they recognize that your solution has solved their problem, they're committed to your approach, they might invite their team members, they abandon their previous methods, and they become committed to your solution. Value realization represents the end of the evaluation phase, when you've successfully solved their job-to-be-done and they've committed to your solution as their permanent approach.
The growth phase focuses on delivering continued value and expanding that value relationship over time. This phase typically involves continued value delivery and value growth components. Continued value ensures customers remain satisfied and engaged with your solution, while value growth introduces more advanced features, additional team members, or expansion into adjacent use cases. The growth phase is critical for net revenue retention, encompassing both customer retention and revenue expansion from existing customers.
Other topics discussed include:
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Using the Jobs-to-be-Done Framework to Understand Your Customer
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Conducting Switch Interviews to Uncover Customer Motivations
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Identifying Customer-Centric KPIs to Measure Success
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Auditing Your Buyer's Experience for Strategic Misalignment
Today's advice is provided with insights from Georgiana Laudi, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
Watch the full interview on YouTube
AI and Marketing: Data-Backed Insights From Michael Stelzner
There's a quiet revolution underway in marketing: 60% of marketers are already using AI daily, and that figure's expected to hit 90% by next year.
What does that mean for your job? Is being AI-curious enough anymore?
In a candid conversation, Michael Stelzner and Dan Sanchez unpack the 2025 AI Marketing Industry Report, revealing how AI is changing marketing work, what tools your peers are using, how they're using them, what might be coming next, and more.
You'll discover:
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The surprising truth about AI and job displacement
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Why daily AI use jumped from 37% in just one year—and what this means for your business
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The #1 problem marketers face with AI
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Which AI platform is quietly stealing market share from ChatGPT
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The single biggest thing 81% of marketers want to master right now
Watch more here.
Claude Code Adds Plugin Support for Custom Workflows and Extensions: Claude Code has introduced plugin support, allowing developers to package and share combinations of slash commands, agents, hooks, and MCP servers to streamline and customize their coding environment. These lightweight plugins can be enabled or disabled as needed and are installable using a single command. Developers can also create and host plugin marketplaces to distribute tools internally or to the wider community. With plugins now in public beta, Claude Code aims to standardize customizations for everything from DevOps automation to code review workflows. Anthropic
Google Launches Gemini CLI Extensions: Google has launched Gemini CLI extensions, enabling developers to personalize their command-line experience by integrating external tools like Stripe, Figma, Postman, and Shopify directly into Gemini CLI. Each extension comes with a smart playbook that allows the AI to use these tools effectively right out of the box. The new Gemini CLI Extensions page helps developers discover and install community, partner, and Google-built extensions using a simple command. This launch positions Gemini CLI as a flexible, intelligent assistant capable of adapting to diverse developer workflows. Google
Meta Expands AI-Powered Reel Translations: Meta has extended its AI dubbing and translation tools for Instagram Reels to support Hindi and Portuguese, alongside English and Spanish. The feature uses the creator's own voice tone for natural dubbing and offers optional lip syncing for a seamless viewing experience. Creators maintain full control over translations, which can be reviewed, turned off, or removed. Meta also announced upcoming tools for translating text stickers and multi-speaker reels, aimed at helping creators reach global audiences with minimal effort. Instagram
Instagram Edits Adds PDF Reports and Creative Tools: Instagram's Edits app is rolling out new features this week, including the ability to generate PDF reports that share account and Reels performance insights. Users can now enhance videos with over 250 new sound effects—just in time for Halloween—alongside a new sound effect search function. The update also introduces Iconic Texts, offering dynamic combinations of fonts, colors, animations, and effects. Additionally, K-pop artist JENNIE's exclusive "ZEN SERIF" font joins the app's expanding design toolkit. Instagram via Social Media Examiner Editorial
Instagram Expands Add Yours Sticker with Multi-Media Templates: Instagram has introduced Add Yours Clips, a new template-based feature that lets users respond to Stories with multiple photos or videos instead of a single image. The update builds on the popular Add Yours prompt with creative flexibility. Users can access the update through the Add Yours Templates section under the label Add more with Add Yours. Lindsey Gamble via Threads
LinkedIn Restricts Competitor Analytics to Premium Company Pages: LinkedIn is limiting access to its Competitor Analytics feature, which provides insights into follower growth and post engagement from rival pages. Starting October 15, free-tier users will only be able to compare against one competitor, while Premium Company Pages can analyze up to nine competitors and view trending content from three. Social Media Today
Meta Launches Instagram and Facebook Creator Discovery APIs: Meta has officially released two new APIs aimed at scaling creator-brand collaborations across its platforms. The Instagram Creator Marketplace API and Facebook Creator Discovery API are now in general availability, offering tools to search for creators by keyword or filter and access audience insights like demographics and engagement rates. These APIs support branded content campaigns and prioritize creators likely to excel in partnership ads. Developers must complete app review to access the new permissions, with preview documentation already available to streamline onboarding. Meta
Meta Adds Flexible Spend Option for Excluded Placements via API: Meta has introduced a new capability for Marketing API advertisers that allows up to 5% of campaign spend to go toward excluded placements, provided it enhances performance. This optional setting must be enabled through new API endpoints and offers an alternative to fully blocking underperforming placements. Advertisers can adjust their configurations anytime, gaining more nuanced control over delivery strategies. While this feature adds flexibility, Meta continues to recommend Advantage+ placements for optimal reach and cost efficiency across campaigns. Meta
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