Trivia Question

What groundbreaking online payment company originally started out with the name X?

The answer is at the bottom of the page!

Spotify Wrapped and The Power of Personalized Data

As the year winds down, Spotify wrapped appears on social media feeds all around the world.

In 2020, this simple feature led to a 21% increase in Spotify downloads in the first week of December. Users shared their Wrapped stories over 60 million times on social media, turning this personal data into a viral sensation.

It has been described as a “best-in-class marketing campaign,” earning multiple Webby awards and consistently serving as a case study in successful digital-age marketing.

For entrepreneurs and businesses, Spotify Wrapped is a great example of the power of combining data with personalization.

People love meaningful insights about themselves that are presented in an engaging way.

This is something that you can utilize in your business.

Can you present your customers (or your employees) with personalized information from this year that they will enjoy and want to share?

Here’s a framework Spotify Wrapped follows:

• Wrapped gives users a deep dive into their listening habits, offering fun insights like top songs, favorite artists, and genres.
• They make the data fun and engaging. The animated, story-like presentation of Wrapped ensures that users just don’t view their stats – they experience them.
• They also offer a glimpse into global music trends, spotlighting the year’s most loved songs and artists.

It might take some effort, but the payoff can be huge.

The Gillette Secret To Selling That Ignited Their Sales

If you’re looking for ideas on how to better market your product, this hugely successful Gillette campaign should encourage you to think outside the box…

In 1895, King C. Gillette invented the disposable razor blade and, with it, a groundbreaking business model called two-part pricing.

Two-part pricing can be summed up in a quote attributed to Gillette, “Give ’em the razor, sell ’em the blades”.

Think about it, for a razor blade to work, you need two parts: the handle and the blade.

The blade needs to be replaced often, so if you can get a customer to use the razor, they will need to keep buying the blades.

100 years on, Gillette took this philosophy to another level and started posting free shaving kits to men to celebrate their 18th birthday.

While most people would think , ‘I can’t give away my product for free!’ the team at Gillette realized that if a small percentage loved the razor, they would likely spend $50+ per year on the blades for years to come.

Their idea paid off… In 2022, their revenue was $10.3B.

You don’t need to sell razors to to use two-part pricing. You’ll now see that it is used everywhere…

• Printers are fairly cheap to buy, but the ink cartridges are annoyingly axpensive.
• Nespresso apparently loses money on its coffee machines, but imagine how much it makes on the pods!
• Sony loses money on the PlayStation because the know they will make it back in game purchases (and now in-game purchases).

That’s great if you sell physical products, but what if you sell info products?

Well, as you were reading about two part pricing, you may have realized that it shares similarities to the MIFGE.

In fact, many new businesses are giving away razor handles for free as their version of the Most Incredible Free Gift Ever and having customers subscribe to receive shipments of blades.

If you’ve not yet implemented the MIFGE or the Linchpin, check out the video here to get inspiration on what you can offer, the transformation will see, and the exact strategy to implement this.

The Surprising Power of Explainer Videos

If your landing page isn’t converting as well as you’d like, it might be time to bring out an underutilized hero… an explainer video!

While creating professional videos can be expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to get right, explainer videos can be created for next to nothing in less then an hour and can be easily edited until you feel you’ve created the perfect video.

And they can generate some pretty fantastic results:

• Dropbox saw their subscriber count jump to 100 million thanks to a simple, catchy explainer video.
• Work.com had conversions increase aby almost 20% with the help of their explainer video.
• With just one simple explainer video, Twitter was able to pull in 10 million new users.

But it’s not just big names reaping the benefits. Explainer videos have proven to be universally effective.

The magic and appeal of explainer videos lie in how they break down complex ideas into fun, easy-to-digest visuals.

And there are plenty of stats to show how effective they are:

• According to video marketing stat experts Wyzowl 79% of visitors would rather watch a video to learn about your product than read a text blurb.
• 95% of people watch explainer videos to learn more about products or services.
• Consumers are 64% more likely to purchase after watching a video.
• Explainer videos have been instrumental in reducing support queries (47%) and increasing website traffic (76%).
• 80% of marketers marketers found they increased dwell time on their site.
• 69% of people have been persuaded to buy a software by an explainer video, while 81% were convinced to purchase a product or service.

With stats like these, it’s certainly worth split-testing your current page vs one with an explainer video.

One of the best explainer video tools is Toonly (you may have seen ads for it).

It’s very easy to use, cheap (it comes with a 14 day trial), and you know the end product is going to be high-quality.

Trivia Answer

PayPal. It was co-founded by Elon Musk in 1998, originally named X.com before it became PayPal in 2001. No wonder he changed Twitter to X.