🍗Stuffed? The average American consumes more than 6000 calories on Christmas Day. Good effort, but we can do better.

🤓 

Trivia

Cookies for breakfast are acceptable until December ends. But which cookie brand built hype with some of the weirdest TikToks this year?

1. Chips Ahoy

2. Girl Scout Cookie

3. Nutter Butter

4. Oreo

Answer at the bottom!

TACTICS

💎 For Copy That Compels, Dig Deeper

Wanna-be copywriters will try to tell you the key to copy that converts.

They’ll say:

• Write a strong hook

• Use the active voice

• Say ‘you’ more than ‘we’

• Throw in some alliteration 

And the one doing the rounds on LinkedIn right now:

• WrItE hOw YoU sPeAK

But that’s not the whole story.

You need to go beyond copy tweaks and fix your positioning.

If that isn’t clear, your copy won’t compel readers to act.

1. Words on the screen are just the tip of the iceberg

What you’re saying affects people more than how you say it, says Diane Wiredu.

Before you talk, you need to know who you are in your category, and why people should buy from you.

That’s positioning. 

2. Nail your positioning

Positioning is the place your brand occupies in your customers’ minds.

To nail it, you need to

• 🧠 Align with their thought processes.

• 🗣️ Appeal to one need, not many.

• 💃 Appear unique.

• 🪨 Be consistent.

Pierre Herubel likes using Semrush to get in their heads

• He goes to the Semrush Keyword Strategy Builder.

• Enters business category and location ⬇️ .

• Sees what people are searching for & find specifically worded needs ⬇️ .

• The more precise it, the better. E.g. “[solution] for [target] who [variable]”.

• To get further variations on a keyword, enter it in the Keyword Overview tool ⬇️ .

Other ways to find your audience’s thoughts

• Go through your or your competition’s customer reviews. 

• See what people are saying on social channels (Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc)

Appealing to one need

You want people to associate you with something.

You only get X chances to make it happen.

Don’t confuse them.

Why you’re unique

Option 1: you do something differently from the competition. Lean on it.

Option 2: you don’t. Build a story around what you want the customers to associate you with.

For inspiration, check out this guide on brand storytelling.

Consistency

Imprinting your image of trustworthiness and appeal into customers’ minds takes multiple encounters. At least 3 for B2B and 8 for B2C, though it depends on your product price point (data from Neil Patel).

Takeaway: Words might sound good but it’s all fluff without strong positioning. Get aligned. Get clarity. Tell your story.

OPINION

🚘️ Amazon Sold Its First Car

By Owen Mulhern.

If a car dealership was ever in Bezos’ sights when he first started Amazon, he was alone in his vision.

Many don’t remember this, but Amazon only sold books until 1998.

When Bezos decided to expand to, well, everything, it didn’t look great. People like Marty Neumeier (brand expert who helped companies like Apple and Google build their brands) reported:

“In one year alone, Amazon lost 31% of its brand value in trying to extend its online book niche into an online bookmusiccameracomputerappliancebabyfurnituretoy niche.”

Critics were everywhere.

Why? Because of a certain business dogma.

The one that says that you need to focus and innovate within your niche, and not spread yourself out in irrelevant categories. 

And sure, when you’re Colgate trying to launch a line of frozen food, or Harley Davidson dropping a new perfume, that dogma might apply. 

But one could also argue that dogmatic thinking is equivalent to staying stuck in the old ways. After all, it’s principally embodied in those who’ve been around long enough to say: “this is the way things are, and it won’t change”. 

And yet the only constant in the universe is change (and lightspeed, and probably some other stuff but let me cook here). In 1998, most would have said a book-seller can’t also sell cars. Fast forward to now and Amazon sold its first on December 10th this year as its net worth hit $2.32 trillion. That’s France’s GDP, by the way.

Takeaway: If your vision is strong, surround yourself with yes-men. No need for that negative energy.

Just kidding, find people who will tell you the hard truths. Then don’t listen to them.

Also a joke, but then what is the takeaway here?

Be crazy?

FREE RESOURCE

What to do if You’re Not Elias St. Elmo Lewis

The lady in the picture above is not Elias.

That’s Fab Giovanetti, award-winning author, entrepreneur and marketer.

So who’s this Elias guy? The one who invented the marketing funnel, that’s who. In 1898, no more, no less.

But we digress. Here’s the goddamn point. It’s coming. You with us? Ok.

How are we supposed to design marketing funnels if we’re not him? 😱 

Breathe.

Fab is giving her own funnel template out for free. Grab it here →

DATA POINT

👀 95% of Advertising Ignores Those With Spending Power

The marketing industry has always been youth-obsessed; they’re the people defining what’s current. 

But only 5-10% of budgets go to winning the attention of the 50+ year old category.

The marketers trying to be down with the kids could be missing a trick. Cause that’s a lot of spending power going untapped.

iHeartMedia and Malcolm Gladwell’s Pushkin Industries rolled out a study to uncover which segments feel the most left out.

And—for want of a less clickbait-y phrase—the results might surprise you.

Those who feel most overlooked are:

• White

• Higher earners

• Living in suburban areas

Source: iHeartMedia.

And here’s the thing. 72% of people shop elsewhere when the brand visibly ignores them. Even if the product is right.

Takeaway: You need to be intentional and go get this segment, if it makes sense for you.

PRO TIPS

From the best, for the best, and yes, that’s you.

• How to build thought leadership and generate demand by Henry Wang

• 26 predictions for social media marketing in 2025 by Andrew Hutchinson

• BoFU best practices by Lashay Lewis

• Flesh out your ICP with comments and reviews by Stacked Marketer

• Your average CAC is lying to you — do this instead, by Brian Balfour

MEME-Y

🤓 

Trivia

Which cookie brand built hype with some of the weirdest TikToks this year?

Answer: Nutter Butter.

Their TikTok followers doubled in just two weeks in September with the NY Times calling its posts "a cross between a Van Gogh painting, a 90s MTV commercial and rendition of a psychedelic trip."

Check their content out here.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Click here to see how to learn SEO in 2025, fast.

Take Brian Dean’s SEO crash course today.

Get 14 days free with Semrush.