Adi Ronen

I think new subcategories are one of the most effective ways to differentiate. You're not creating something entirely new (category creation), but establishing a sub-branch of an existing category - by introducing new must-have capabilities. It's what we're doing at Wynter. Yes it still involves more risk and making bets than the traditional way of competing, but with a much bigger upside. To find an opportunity to develop a new subcategory, you need to create a new set of "must-haves". These are characteristics early fans truly care about. Requirements to win the positioning game by building a new subcategory: - new or improved *must-haves* that provide a different/significantly better outcome or user experience - there's a visible brand driving this - early adopters jumping on this (word of mouth) The pre-requisite to subcategories is feature parity with the traditional categories. Tesla needed to argue that their battery range was adequate before people would seriously consider the new electric car subcategory it created. And then Tesla added new "must-haves" like crazy acceleration, big screens and self-driving capabilities to outcompete. Offerings without new "must-haves" won't be relevant, visible nor credible. Winning is no longer based on "my brand is better than your brand", but rather on being the ONLY (or at least the most relevant) brand for this subcategory. In case of Wynter, we deliver insights from B2B decision makers (detailed targeting options), on-demand, typically in 24 hrs, through a self-serve platform. Other players in the market research / qual insights space can't do any of that. Competitors lose because they lack the new "must-haves" this subcategory brings. The ultimate goal is to have your brand be the only one that is visible and credible with respect to delivering these new “must-haves", so choosing you over others becomes an obvious choice.

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Nikos Ntirlis, Fedor Šimić & I are looking to meet some Pinterest Ads/Pinterest marketing experts. We're looking for experts who would be like to be featured in some upcoming Databox content over the next few months (research reports, articles, social posts, potentially as podcast guests on Metrics & Chill & featured in our Move the Needle newsletter). We like to feature the expertise of practitioners. They don't need to be well known or have big followings. But, hands-on expertise is critical & they must be willing to share that expertise and their (or their clients') success stories. We recently launched an integration with both Pinterest and Pinterest Ads. However, the content will be about how to execute, manage, optimize ads and marketing on Pinterest. Who do you know with experience with advertising and marketing on Pinterest? Intros in DMs welcome. But, tagging people in comments is preferred (as it's easier to organize.)

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Outbrain & Taboola: Our Journey from $200/day to $20,000/day in Just One Month with a Flagship Brand When our partner, an E-learning course provider, first dipped his toes into Outbrain and Taboola through his media buying team, the results were underwhelming. The performance lagged behind other acquisition channels, leaving him scratching his head. But knowing the potential - seeing how giants like Babbel were thriving on these Native Ads' networks - he suspected he was missing a crucial element. He was right 🧐 Recognizing the need for specialized expertise in Native Ads, he reached out to us at Schwartz Consulting for an audit. With our 12 years of experience, we quickly pinpointed several areas for improvement: 👉 Lack of a dedicated landing page for Native Ads. 👉 Basic tracking (pixel-based). 👉 A static optimization strategy. Thanks to the audit, our partner was convinced by our recommendations and we commenced our collaboration. Here’s how we turned things around: Week 1: Laying the Foundation 🚀 Our team crafted dedicated Landing Pages & Creatives incorporating all best practices. We transitioned from pixel-based to server-to-server tracking for more accurate data. With the campaigns set up, we applied our unique optimization methodology. By the end of the week, we were hitting close to our partner’s goals, scaling from $200 to $1,000 per day. Week 2: Hitting Targets and Scaling 🚀🚀 Securing our Cost Per Lead (CPL) target was the focus. Once achieved, we began scaling on the most profitable network, pushing our daily spend from $1,000 to $5,000. Week 3: Expanding Reach 🚀🚀🚀 We went live on all Native Ads networks, continuing to scale and seeing our daily spend soar from $5,000 to $10,000. Week 4: Refining and Maximizing 🚀🚀🚀🚀 We A/B tested multiple Landing Pages and Creatives, fine-tuning our approach to maximize results while keeping CPL on target. This rigorous optimization paid off, and our daily spend hit the impressive range of $10,000 to $20,000. In conclusion, most Brands possess all the ingredients to succeed with Native Ads, but having an expert can make all the difference. Our collaboration with this flagship E-learning Brand lasted three fruitful years, a testament to our effective strategies and enduring partnerships 🤝 It is one of our many successes at Schwartz Consulting and more are currently WIP. Stay tuned! 👀 ----------------- At Schwartz Consulting, our goal is simple: support Brands in their ability to find success at scale on Outbrain for Performance & Taboola. If you enjoyed the post, simply like ❤️ #outbrain #taboola #nativeads #nativeadvertising

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Will You Be My White-Label Partner? (#whitelabelagency) Agencies are flooded with partnership offers. To truly stand out, you need to nail the process from start to finish. Key Points: From First Contact to Sealed Deal ✅ Credibility is King: Showcase wins, not just promises. ✅ Communication Matters: Be responsive and proactive. ✅ Value = ROI: Offer competitive pricing and scalability. ✅ Beyond Results: Transparent reporting and ongoing support. ✅ Ethics First: Prioritize sustainable, long-term strategies. Unlock the full guide to successful white-label partnerships in my newsletter (https://lnkd.in/gtrXawX4)

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What Dropbox Capture's launch reminded me about great UI/UX-- Besides competitive/comparative analysis, since the product is button-by-button the same as Loom. But startup consumer tech gets this simple rule wrong more than half of the time: - Tell me what's about to happen - Tell me why it's happening - Do it without surprises Need to get microphone access on my computer? Show me what the button will look like that's about to pop up, remind me that you need it to capture audio for your beautiful screen recordings, and then when you click OK, it all happens. Need permission to record my screen? Sounds scary! Not if you just reminded me that you are a screen recording app, you'll only use it when I, the user, hit 'record', and tell me what the exact checkbox looks like that I'm about to hit. Good UI/UX isn't just about getting me to my experience with as few clicks as possible, though that is very, very important. It's also about making the user feel like we're being given a big, warm product version of a hug. If my software is a dentist, I want it to say, "You're about to hear a big scary drill noise and a little poke, but don't worry, it's just clearing out that nasty cavity so it won't hurt anymore." Don't just shove the drill in my molar. If you have a new product and want me to provide honest feedback, the first 3 people that slide into my DMs with a safe download link (if you try to phish me, I'll know!), I'll tell you how my initial experience went! #userexperience #userinterface #uiux

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Agencies shouldn't have advertised minimums. Yet...many do. I hear the following from agencies, often. "If they don't have $X per month, we don't want to chat with them" A better reframe is "most of our clients spend $X per month with us" The reason I think it's worth it to explore, most of the time, is because I see budgets balloon every single day. In 2024 alone, I've seen the following. - Brand came to me with a budget of $20k/mo. Ended up signing a retainer for close to $100k/mo. - Brand came to me with a budget of $7k/mo. Ended up signing a retainer for $15k/mo. - Brand came to me with a budget of $10k/mo. Ended up signing a retainer for $30k/mo. - Brand came to me with a (project) budget of $50k. Ended up with a budget of $200k. Agencies who want to grow, should explore. They have to. You'll potentially waste some time. But, you'll potentially find some great clients. When agencies tell me they have minimums, I joke, that brands don't always walk around with a sign on their forehead with their budget on it. To get to the big budgets, you have to be willing to talk about the small stuff, sometimes. If you do, and you think long term v short, over time, you'll be really really really really really glad you did.

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Learn how to fine-tune your product to meet market demands with strategic customer conversations and data-driven feedback mechanisms 👇 ➡ 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗲: Brian Long, CEO & Co-Founder at Attentive 🔌 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿: Nick Moran, General Partner at New Stack Ventures and Nate Pierotti, Principal at New Stack Ventures ✏ “The Playbook to Finding Product-Market Fit, When Founders Should Begin to Scale, and Lessons from Building Attentive” ⭐ 𝗦𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀: 💬 "I think that what we got right were two things. One, I think that we talked to a tremendous amount of customers, before we started building things. So we learned to hear their problems, hear their issues, and then start building and assaulting those, you know, rather than kind of just jumping right into build-build-build, so that saved us a lot of time." ⭐ 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯���𝗰𝗸, 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗯𝗶𝗮𝘀: 💬 "I think you're also looking at things like NPS, you know… because if that number starts dropping, it's often because you're no longer solving the problem." ⭐ 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆: 💬 "I think that we've taken an even longer term focus. We know what can be big. And we know it's dangerous to start getting an ego to think you can do things because it's always very hard. You've always got to think towards taking a longer term view, having a thesis around that view, and then understand how the pieces can come together for success." ───── 👉 Follow me, Alexander Small, for tactics and strategies for building startups from industry-leading Founders, Operators and Investors

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HELP YOUR INVESTORS HELP YOU B2B Startup founders: don’t rely on your investors for intros to early design partners. You must get those yourself. However, once you prove real value (eg grow revenues, reduce costs, increase operational efficiency) with a small number of paying customers, your best investors will be able to help make scaled intros to prospects. Your investors are excited to ping potential customers on your behalf once they feel like they are doing a favor to the company by introducing them to your product. So - give them the ammunition and data to do so. The more quantitative the metrics, the better.

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How do you get guest posts "right"? I don't have the answer, but I'm trying to figure it out! I want to incorporate more guests and experts into MKT1 newsletter, but don’t want to lose the strong POV and connected frameworks the newsletter is known for. Why? MKT1 Newsletter is moving from 1 to 2 posts a month, starting this month! The second each month will incorporate expert opinions or examples from the community. Thoughts on how you’d like to see me incorporate experts into the newsletter? Examples of great guest content?

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News : 📹 Instagram is testing a new short-form video feature called "Blend" Instagram is working on a feature that would recommend Reels to you and a friend based on videos you've shared with each other and your individual interests. Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi unearthed the feature, which is called Blend. Instagram confirmed that it's testing Blend internally and it hasn't started trialing it publicly. It may be the case that Blend never sees the light of day, though it's always intriguing to find out about the ideas Instagram is toying with. The platform hasn't revealed more details about how Blend will work, though the idea seems to be that Instagram users and one of their besties will discover new Reels together instead of one of them finding a video they like and DMing it to the other. It would make sense for Blend to have an indicator that the other person has already seen a particular Reel so that the two people who have access to the feed can start chatting about it. TikTok doesn't have a feature along these lines, as TechCrunch notes, so Blend could give Instagram an advantage when it comes to folks who like to check out short-form videos together. As with many of the other features platforms of this ilk introduce, Blend fundamentally seems to be about increasing engagement. https://lnkd.in/eVKDK3mB #tech #socialmedia #innovation #blend #instagram #tiktok #marketing #technology #content #digital #marketing #trend #marketingtips #reels

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The Everything Marketplaces community is an endless source of knowledge for learning how to build, launch, & scale a marketplace. To give you an idea of what I mean by endless, we're about to cross 7,000 posts shared in the community. That's thousands of posts with founders asking specific questions, sharing answers, insights, & more on marketplace startups from actual experience. We've also started curating some of the top posts & discussions in the community, so here's a screenshot from our weekly update sharing some of them from the past week:

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UGC is officially dead. AI will replace it It’s faster, cheaper and will be better. I founded vidx, combining ad creatives to produce high-converting ecom ads, traditional UGC costs hundreds or thousands every time you want new ads. It wastes a lot of time, going back and forth, making changes and is simply not possible for new brand owners AI is NOT just for ecom brands, it can be used for agencies, software companies and e-commerce brands at any level I have been perfecting to formulate a hands off strategy to produce high quality ad creatives in under 10 minutes. I’ll run you through:   ✅What platforms to use to make an ad ✅How to script your creative in the right way ✅How to edit the creatives fast or get multiple done for you ✅How to get an edited ad and video with AI for $1 And a few other secret bonuses 👀 I was speaking to a client doing $300k+ per month on their brand they told me I should keep this quiet And charge $10k a month for it Having started my first ecom store 4 years ago today I’m sick and tired of this, and it is time to change the space forever So all the info I’m going to giveaway for the next 7 days, 100% free All you have to do is: 1. Connect with me George Stock 2. Comment “UGC” below I’ll send you a video shot by me with PDFs attached Businesses will use this strategy for years to come If you think others will find this useful, feel free to tag and share!

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convo with Taylor Holiday re stats on Share of Wallet in digital marketing and the changes we're seeing in the data across the digital marketing landscape data based off 6,000 brands on Varos see the full analysis in the latest issue of the dtcindex.com + see this data for your competitive set directly in the Varos platform

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The first question we ask when acquiring digital agencies is: How can we improve gross margins? After years of buying and running online businesses, we’ve discovered that agency growth starts with improving basic financials. Here are the 3 frameworks we use to analyze and improve gross margins: 1) Raise Prices Founders often neglect raising prices to avoid customer churn. But this is the first place to start. Begin by discovering when prices were last increased (if ever!). Then analyze prices of competitive services to understand consumer price sensitivity. Finally, quantify existing demand from current clients and leads. Combine those steps to determine whether or not a pricing increase is necessary. 2) Reduce Expenses This is often the most difficult step. Most agency expenses are tied to people. The last thing an acquiring company should do is terminate employees shortly after purchase. However, as high-income earners retire or leave the agency voluntarily, they can be replaced with more cost-effective overseas talent. Recruitment efforts focused on cheaper labor solutions also help reduce expenses over time. Many U.S.-based agencies are unaware that some overseas talent charge just 1/10th the rate of their American counterparts without compromising quality. 3) Reduce Services Here’s a common scenario: An agency’s core service yields an 85% gross margin while other, lower quality services yield a gross margin of 40% or less. When this is the case, we’ll often eliminate the lower-margin peripheral services. Sure, short-term revenue will decline. But newfound capacity and focus directed at an agency’s core service will unlock scale—and higher revenue—over the medium- and long-term. Many founders are poor bookkeepers—and that’s OK. There are more pressing issues founders need to deal with than scrutinizing financial statements on a daily basis. But lots of founders think they have high gross margins when, in fact, expenses are miscategorized. Half the battle with growing gross margins is simply fine-tuning expense categorization. Improving gross margins can be achieved through a variety of strategies and tactics. For example, deploying new sales and marketing initiatives is a worthy consideration. But our 70+ years of combined experience managing and acquiring digital agencies teaches us that improving basic financials is the best place to start to improve gross margins.

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🚀 What Should You Make as a Startup CTO in 2024? 🚀 One of my biggest joys at Kruze is publishing startup executive compensation data. This time I’m updating CTO pay for 2024, based on payroll data (not a survey, so it’s legit!). 📊 In 2024, from data covering over 250 startups with collective funding of over $1.5 billion: +Average CTO Salary: $157,000 +Median CTO Salary: $150,000 While these figures may seem low at first glance, it’s crucial to understand the context. For instance, non-founder CTOs often receive significantly higher salaries than their founder counterparts due to the equity differences: +Founding CTOs: $139,000 +Non-founding CTOs: $213,000 Moreover, as startups progress from Seed to Series B, the responsibilities and therefore the compensation of CTOs increase significantly. This highlights the premium on tech leadership in a scaling business. 📈 For a deeper look at how company stage, industry, and founder status affect CTO pay, as well as comparisons with CEO salaries, be sure to check out our detailed salary guide. The nuances and strategies here are essential for aligning compensation with market realities and retaining top tech talent.

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What if your marketing signals to Klaviyo, or Meta Ads, or Google Ads drops for one or many flows? Who monitors these tools for signal loss periodically? How many SaaS tools do you use to deliver your pre-order experience i.e. customer acquisition and conversion experience? How long does it take for you to detect it? And how much does it cost you? 🔵 Today’s solutions involve: - Logging into and Monitoring each tool daily is hard - Centralizing Monitoring across tools is even harder - Getting your analyst to look at the dashboards - filter down by each dimension and dmension value e.g. by Device and by Mobile, Web and Tablet.  - Creating a custom dashboard 🔴 Challenges of this approach: - The process does not scale with tools across the overall experience - The process does not scale with the costs of monitoring each tool and/or creating custom tooling to drive centralization - The process does not scale with analytical resources The solution? Out Of The Blue™. Out of the Blue’s AI-powered revenue-optimization platform helps eCommerce brands drive top-line revenue growth and lower costs by reducing revenue loss, leakages, and missed revenue capture opportunities. By working continuously 24*7 behind the scenes, we help drive time-critical interventions rather than reactive actions. Want to get started with capturing revenue that you are otherwise leaving on the tableoptimization? DM. I’d love to guide you through the process.

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