Sunday Brain Dump [DATE]

Okay, so SUNDAY BRAIN DUMP.

If you have been doing all the marketing and advertising stuff from what you have gathered from your marketing forefathers…

You may be messing with the balance of exploration and exploitation. (Interesting sh*t, I will get into that in a bit)

Anyways, so in marketing:

Your offer is king. And creative is the jester.

But without the jester, the king's court is boring as fuck.

Your offer could be hotter than Ryan Reynolds in a sauna, but if your ad creative is as bland as unseasoned tofu, you're screwed.

On the flip side, your ad creative could be funnier than a cat meme,

BUT,

if your offer sucks, you're still screwed.

On the flip side, your ad creative could be funnier than a cat meme,

BUT,

if your offer sucks, you're still screwed.

So what could be the possible solution to that?

Most marketers are too scared to explore. They'd rather stick to what "works" than risk their precious ROI on something new.

However it’s a catch 22.

Without exploration, you're just exploiting a dying resource. It's like fishing in the same spot every day - eventually, you'll run out of fish.

You can take this marketing lesson from Bees (Trust me, it's relevant.)

Bee colonies have two types of workers:

1. The waggle dancers: They stick to known food sources.

2. The explorers: They search for new food sources.

Smart colonies balance both.

Because when that prime flower patch dries up, you need a backup plan.

So when it comes to marketing,

• 80% of the time you should exploit what works.

• 20% of the time you NEED to explore new possibilities.

It's not just smart.

It’s mandatory.

In an era where marketers are draining the ROI out of every technique like Nestle drains water from African countries, you gotta spend resources on what’s going to work tomorrow.

Which means you need to test more, more and more.

It’s canva-made ads yesterday, memes tomorrow, and hopefully not more of that annoying fucking “WHAT SHOULD WE WATCH ON PEACOCK” Tiktok ads.

(No hate to Jared the creator. Peacock just swung and missed on that ad)

Speaking of memes, testing, and a bad transition into the next section…

Memes are one of the best ways to test.

Because memes are always changing.

Sometimes a meme lives and dies in 24 hours.

Sometimes they live forever.

You never know.

BUT PEOPLE LOVE THEM!!!

And the nice thing is that they work both in the exploitation AND exploring phase.

To keep things simple because I could make an essay on just this;

On the exploration side:

• Meme marketing is a great way to test headlines while getting a much further reach than any of your typical content would.

• Memes are also a constant way for us to measure the pain points in our market.

• The online audience is far more receptive to memes.

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m ONLY working with memes.

But if we’re thinking 80/20 principle - it’s my 20%.

We already heard it from the Harvard Business Review back in 2020.

An advertiser that ran 15 experiments in a given year sees about a 30% higher ad performance that year. Those who ran 15 experiments in the prior year saw about a 45% increase in performance, highlighting the positive longer-term impact of the exploration strategy.

That's not chump change.

For one of my clients working in the real estate media field, that equates to an additional $15,000/month.

With that being said…

Take 20% of your marketing budget and go exploring.

Try that wild idea.

Test that crazy concept.

Make that weird meme.

Playing it safe is the riskiest move of all.

You can't exploit what you haven't explored.

I’ll save talking about exploiting ad creatives another time.

The espresso shots I had before sitting down to write are wearing off and I need a nap now.

Be Authentically Different and You.

Your marketing MemeLord,

• Ryan Juarez