Turing's Tofu #16

📰 This Week in AI & SaaS 📰

• Adobe is integrating generative AI tools into Premiere Pro, its video editing platform. These new features will allow users to create videos, generate missing scene elements, remove distractions, and extend the length of clips, through text prompts. Read more. 

• OpenAI has launched a new office in Tokyo, Japan. It will give local businesses access to a custom GPT-4 model, customized for translating and summarizing Japanese text, 3x faster than its predecessor. Read more. 

• Meta’s independent Oversight Board is investigating Meta’s current AI content policies and actions, following two instances where explicit AI content was posted onto its platforms, but Meta failed to respond adequately. Read more.

🌟Turing’s Top Picks 🌟

FEATURED TOOLS 

• RAGnexus: RAGnexus is an AI platform that creates personalized AI systems based on business needs, it can build tailored solutions that improve things like data-driven decision-making, or the automation of repetitive tasks. Try it. 

• AI Fundraising Letter Generator: AI Fundraising Letter Generator is a tool, powered by ChatGPT, that utilizes the power of AI to generate fundraising letters. Try it.

• Growth Makers: Growth Makers is a tool that employs autonomous AI agents that identify and implement innovative marketing strategies to stimulate rapid business growth. Try it.  

Read of the Week: 

10 Things That Always Work in Marketing with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin (Part 1)

In part one of this 2-part series, Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder and CEO and respected leader in the SaaS space, gives us his top 5 tried and trusted ways to build a marketing strategy (including booking some steak dinners) that are guaranteed to grow your business, without costing you your arm, leg, and soul. 

Read it.

💡 Marketing Moments with Mounier 💡

In a marketing masterclass episode of "My First Million," Episode 514 takes us into the mind of marketing legend Craig Clemens, who shares insights from his 15-year journey, amassing over a billion dollars in product sales. Here, Clemens dissects the "seven human hijacks"—psychological triggers that grasp consumer attention and skyrocket sales.

🧠 Seven Human Hijacks:

1. Make it About Them: Emphasize benefits that directly improve the consumer's life, making the product indispensable based on personal gain or improvement.

2. Create an Event: Events generate excitement and publicity, leveraging the psychological phenomenon where people are drawn to gatherings and activities, enhancing engagement and interest.

3. Powerful Demonstrations: Showcasing products in action in a way that highlights their effectiveness can convince consumers of their value, making abstract benefits tangible.

4. Unquestionable Proof: Using authoritative figures or data to validate the product’s claims builds trust and credibility, reducing consumer skepticism.

5. Change Daily Behavior: Introducing products that fit seamlessly into or enhance daily routines can lead to habitual use, increasing long-term adoption.

6. Sell the Dream: Inspire consumers with the potential aspirational lifestyle or results they could achieve with the product, appealing to their desires and ambitions.

7. Help Them Rebel or Feel Superior: Positioning a product as a tool for differentiation allows consumers to stand out or rebel against the status quo, appealing to their desire to be unique or ahead of trends.

📊 Examples and Application:

• Bacon as a Breakfast Staple: By convincing doctors to endorse bacon as a hearty breakfast option, marketers changed public perception, making bacon a breakfast staple. This showcases the hijack of changing daily behavior and providing unquestionable proof through expert endorsements.

• Orange Juice Marketing: By promoting the health benefits of orange juice and tying it to daily nutrient intake, marketers effectively changed breakfast habits across America, demonstrating the hijack of changing daily behavior and selling the dream of a healthier lifestyle.

• Toothbrushing Habits: Claude Hopkins promoted Pepsodent toothpaste by highlighting a daily self-test for people to determine if they had a “film” coting on their teeth, this not only changed daily hygiene habits but also sold the dream of having a movie-star smile, using powerful demonstrations and making it about the consumer.

📈 Insights based on numbers:

• 45% Agreement Among Doctors: The bacon breakfast campaign showed that if a significant percentage of trusted authorities (doctors) endorse a product, public adoption can dramatically increase.

• 100 Million Views on Probiotics Ad: This indicates the massive reach and influence a well-crafted marketing campaign can have, especially when it educates consumers on a new concept like probiotics, changing daily health routines.

If you want to dive deeper into Craig Clemens' marketing strategies and learn how to apply these psychological triggers effectively, click below to watch the full episode.

👇 Watch the full episode 👇

👾 TOFU Quick Bytes: Topaz Labs Teardown 👾

Topaz Labs teardown

Founded in 2006, Topaz Labs is a photo editing SaaS company that uses AI-powered features to create professional-looking photos and videos.

Strategy overview: Topaz Labs has a multi-faceted marketing strategy, predominantly focused on digital marketing, particularly social media. They leverage the power of social media to create a buzz around their new products and releases to increase leads, reach, and engagement among their target market of amateur and professional photographers, videographers, and graphic designers. 

Performance Analysis:

• They get 2.4 million site visits each month, with an average visit duration of 2.4 minutes 

• Their estimated annual revenue is $4.6 million 

• They grew their employee count by 52% last year

• They generated 44,853 new emails, 14,206 new followers on YouTube, Facebook & Instagram, 13,105 social shares, plus 3,973 new trial accounts from a single social media contest

How have they achieved this? 

Critical Teardown:

What does Topaz Labs do well?

Social media giveaways: To grow its email marketing lists and increase its social media following, Topaz Labs regularly runs competitions across its social media platforms–mainly across Instagram and Facebook, as they are more visual-centric, which aligns with their brand and product–to encourage engagement and sharing among its followers.  

Facebook ads: They also use highly engaging Facebook ads to promote their giveaways and increase lead generation, making sure they test ad visuals and messaging for different audiences. Alongside ads, they also post highly engaging content on their feed to help build social proof, which lowers the cost per lead and increases campaign effectiveness.

Email marketing: Once they’ve acquired their leads, via social media giveaways and ads, Topaz Labs sends them informative, visually stunning engaging emails, showcasing its product features and guiding them through the sales funnel.

What doesn’t Topaz Labs do well? 

Narrow reach: Although Topaz Labs markets and positions its products really well to photography, videography and graphic design professionals, they haven’t expanded its reach or marketing to include border audiences, such as hobbyists, bloggers, and small business owners who might benefit from quick, easy, cost-effective video and photo editing features. 

Revenue Growth: To only be at 4.6 Million in ARR after 18 years in business seems like they might be hitting a wall. Leveraging partnerships and channel marketing could be a great way to tap into pre-built markets and scale revenue.

Customer education: Reviews show that some users find the technical aspects of the product difficult to grasp, highlighting the lack of educational content available. A few how-to tutorial videos, webinars, or user guides would improve the onboarding experience, turning new users into happy, satisfied, and loyal customers. 

AI integration:

Product demos: Topaz Labs uses AI to enhance photo quality, which is their major USP, and they make sure they showcase this in their marketing materials, showing before and after edits, using their AI tools, clearly demonstrating the effectiveness of their software.

Targeted marketing: They leverage AI-driven analytics to understand customer behavior, preferences, and engagement which allows them to tailor their advertising campaigns, targeting specific demographics, based on usage patterns and purchasing behaviors.

New features: They also use AI to analyze customer feedback and use this data and analysis to inform product strategies and make improvements to their future features and products.  

Key takeaways: 

• Consider running competitions and giveaways on your most popular social media channels to increase reach and engagement.

• Drive people to these giveaways using ads that are tailored to your target audience, and test different imagery and messaging to see what resonates best.
  

• Send attention-grabbing emails that are useful to the reader, add value and are visually appealing 

• Consider expanding your reach to other target demographics that you might not have considered initially, but could utilize your product or service.

• Make sure you have plenty of helpful, educational material handy, especially for new users, so there is no friction when customers use your product or service. 

• Try showcasing your USP features in your promotional content visually, making it crystal clear what it does and how effective it is. 

• Utilize AI tools that allow you to collect and analyze customer behavior and feedback and use this data to inform your marketing and product strategies. 

What campaign or content marketing strategy would you like to see torn apart, next? Let me know! 

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