📰 Growth Daily - Wednesday, Jan. 11

Today's 5 news, tips, & tools you need to know

January 11, 2023

1️⃣ - Report: Overall Holiday Spending Was Up 7%

📰 TL;DR - The GlobalData survey of 55,000+ consumers found that shoppers spent 8.4% more on Thanksgiving, 6.9% more during Black Friday + Cyber Monday Week, and 6.5% more during the holiday season than the same periods in 2021.

However, the average American shopper bought gifts for 4 people in 2022, down from roughly 6 people a year before. Also interestingly enough, the number of consumers who bought holiday gifts on sale or at discount increased by about 50% ... So lots of mixed signals from the holiday season!

💡Insight - Take your pick as to the reason why holiday spending went up last year despite plenty of layoffs and economic slowing. It's either because inflation raised the cost of just about everything OR holiday shopping and gifting is one of the few things people are not willing to significantly cut their budget for.

Either way, we think 2023 won't be as bad as the headlines are making it seem! And we'll report on all consumer economic trends so you can forecast your budgets accordingly.

2️⃣ - 12 Ways To Get More YouTube Subscribers

📰 TL;DR - Social Media Today introduced Part 1 of their "24 ways To Get more YouTube Subscriber" infographic series and the insights were actually more unique than we expected. A few of our favorites:

+ Fill out video metadata - it's something we think about, but rarely do! Filling out the metadata fields for our YouTube videos can have a huge impact on how often our videos show up in searches! They give a few sentences about how to optimize the data as well.

+ Upload video transcripts - adding video transcripts will help your ad not only show up in more searches on YouTube but also Google!

+ Add annotation links - they can kind of be a pain to create but linking to your other videos inside your most popular videos is one of the best ways to increase engagement and follower count using YouTube build in annotation links.

3️⃣ - Interview: Delta Airlines Is Using Free Wifi To Get More Rewards Members

📰 TL;DR - The CMO of the world's third-largest airline sat down for an interview with ADWEEK at CES this week to talk about a large array of topics. The most interesting to us was this insight that only 4 out of every 10 people that fly on Delta have a free SkyMiles membership. When someone signs up for a totally free SkyMiles account they are more likely to choose Delta because the airline can send them e-mails, customize their onboard experience, and so much more!

Another interesting insight is that, on average, when a person connects one device to wifi while in the air, they are likely to connect not just 1 but 3 personal devices to wifi. So their CMO saw the correlation of these two data points as an opportunity to offer free wifi on all devices to SkyMiles members, enticing more people to sign up!

💡Insight - Many marketers are too afraid to give something valuable away for free when in fact, sometimes you can get something 10X more valuable by giving away something of value for free. Another CMO might think "well many of our passengers pay for wifi so I would hate to have Delta lose money if we started giving it away for free" ...

... but if the CMO can go to the finance team and make an argument that by giving away a $20 charge per flight, they are able to get X more people to come back and choose Delta for their next flight... they might give up $20 and make $200!

4️⃣ - Microsoft + ChatGPT = Bing Ads Heaven?

📰 TL;DR - Everyone is going crazy for this new AI technology called ChatGPT which seemingly will replace all copywriters by the end of the year, just kidding! Jokes aside, the technology is amazing and if you haven't been following along, Microsoft was one of the early investors in the technology's parent company along with Elon Musk.

Well, Semafor just reported that Microsoft is looking to sink in another $10b investment into the technology alongside reports from a few other sources that Microsoft has begun initial testing of the technology in bing search queries.

💡Insight - Although Bing gets just under 10% of the daily search volume that Google gets every day, Microsoft's search engine still gets a whopping 900 million searches a day! That's ALOT! We have always been super bullish on Bing ads but are even more optimistic with all of this money and attention pouring into it. As a general rule of thumb, if you spend more than $15,000 a month on Google ads, you should consider a small test investment in Bing ads. With all this attention, jump on it before all your competitors start outbidding you, even if your ideal keywords just get 10 or searches a day!

5️⃣ - The Rise Of The Chief Demand Officer

📰 TL;DR - Plant-based meat company Impossible Foods just hired CPG veteran Sheren Jagla as its first-ever Chief Demand Officer. She is tasked with "bringing its sales, marketing, insights and product development teams into one integrated function under her leadership as it prepares for the next step in its growth strategy."

First time you have ever heard that term right? Normally it's Chief Sales or Marketing or Revenue or Data Officer... But this is a new one! Why are we featuring it in Growth Daily?

💡Insight - A quick LinkedIn search shows almost 200 people have the title "Chief Demand Officer" or something similar! We think this is going to be a huge trend as companies wrongfully neglect the middle part of the funnel by focusing their resources on the top and bottom part of the funnel. As humans get more and more new content to choose from every day from streaming services and social platforms alike, it's harder to stand out and generate demand. Should you be looking to hire someone solely in charge of generating demand?

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