Happy Sunday!

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re sitting comfortably, have a beverage in your hand, and you’re ready to do some clicking and exploring. Today’s newsletter is going to be a compilation of resources I use across my day to day.

Before we get to that, I want to say a big thank you to everyone who came to the Q4 Summit in New York City last week, and to the thousands of you who watched the talks on the various live-streaming platforms. We had thousands of people watching live, around the world, and so many great conversations. The next event will be announced very soon, but until then, I’m going to work on getting the individual talks on YouTube for everyone!

During the Q4 Summit, Harley Finkelstein shared a compelling point of view about the importance of novelty — Novelty is “better than any ad, promotion or discount.”

I love this because there is so much that brands can do to leverage novelty to help consumers feel more confident in their purchasing decisions, particularly when thinking about omnichannel experiences. Google recently did some research into this and they found that holiday shoppers who feel confident about recent purchases search for prices, availability, and reviews online before visiting a store much more so than shoppers who don’t feel confident about recent purchases.

I’ll have the talks for you soon!

Vendor of the Week

Roku – The TV streaming app platform with 83M streaming households just launched its own self-service ads manager. 

For the first time, US marketers can now access this audience for as little as $500 to start!

Why does this matter? As you may know, CTV ad spending is projected to reach $30 billion this year, up from $26 billion last year, and some analysts think it could surpass $40 billion by 2026. It’s one of the fastest-growing and largest ad channels in the world right now, and Roku is perfectly positioned to help brands succeed. 

They have the customers and the audience, and now they have the ad network. 

My team and I have started testing their new ads manager, and we’ve been really impressed by how simple, effective, and intuitive it is. We can create an ad for a brand, upload it for approval, select the target audience we’re targeting, and start running campaigns by ourselves. This process used to take weeks, and now it takes less than one day. 

Additionally, Roku partnered with Shopify to enable one-click checkouts directly on-screen via their Roku remote. They're also using AI to up-res and upscale your creative so it looks sharp and beautiful on the big screen. I’m becoming a huge fan, and we will be using this a ton over the next few months and into 2025. 

Check it out and run your first campaign here. 

Limited Supply

Did you listen to this past week’s episode of Limited Supply? I went DEEP into product and brand launches, in honor of Sharma Brands launching the DavidProtein.com website. I also went on a rant about why some brands are unable to scale past $10M ... it has to do with building the brand, and you need to hear the rant.

Listen to the episode on this link!

My Swipe File

For today’s newsletter, I wanted to share a few links that I look at regularly to stay up to date within the world of commerce, CPG, marketing, content and more. Of course, this doesn’t include all the hands-on work I do with my clients at Sharma Brands on a daily basis, but it certainly adds more context.

Landing Page Examples

I frequently love looking at other landing page inspo to see what is out in the market, what is working, what people are testing, and what I could be doing differently or testing into. My favorite way to do this is just by clicking the ads I’m served and seeing where I am led to, especially from channels that have a higher bounce rate, like TikTok or TV. 

TV and TikTok landing pages tend to be the most direct-response-focused, but that’s where I like to find inspiration, knowing I can likely design it better with my team.

When I can’t find new pages or examples right away, here are a few resources I like to use for landing page and website inspiration:

It’s always fun seeing featured examples, that the Sharma Brands team has designed, out in the wild as best-in-class examples!

Email Flow & Campaign Inspiration

Most people tend to setup their emails, especially flows, once, and then never revisit them for months or years. There is so much money you’re most likely leaving on the table by not rigorously optimizing your flows.

When we first start scaling email for one of our clients, the first thing we do is fully audit everything that is automated or triggered. Is it setup to fire properly? Does it have links that contain automatic discounts? Does the pop-up fire on-site when you have traffic coming from email? Are the subject lines truly optimized? Could there be a way to swap a section of content to increase revenue or click-through rate (CTR)?

Here are a couple websites I like to use to find what other brands are doing:

  • Really Good Emails — This is probably the most popular resource for finding emails from different brands.
  • Milled
  • Good Email Copy — Exactly what it sounds like!
  • InkboxReads — This is more for newsletters, but still can find some great inspiration from it.

Campaigns make a lot of money, but you’d be surprised how much more money your flows can be making you.

Copywriting Inspo

Good copy will make someone fall in love with your brand, not just want to buy your product. My favorite copy is when Apple launches new products. I still remember when the MacBook Air first launched, the copy was, “Light. Years ahead.” They always give you 2+ ways to read something, making it 10x more enjoyable.

Here are some good places I like to get copy inspo from:

Ad Creative Inspiration

Lastly, I want to share with you where I get some of my ad creative inspiration. Candidly, I try my best to keep going to websites of brands that I respect from a performance marketing standpoint, and then wait to see what I get targeted with (either from them, or their competitors). 

Typically, when I can’t get served something, I’ll just go check out the ad libraries:

Another thing with ad creative, is I like to see how affiliates are marketing [differently]. They are usually focused on driving conversion, and they tend to have a built-in audience, so their content feels more native. A good example of this is looking at what TikTok Shop affiliates are doing and how they are advertising certain products. 

Here are some more resources for where I get inspiration for ads:

Honestly, let me tell you the secret to finding the best ads. Make an Instagram DM group with 5-10 other marketers or teammates, and everyone should share their favorite ads they see. That’s the only way to find the best ads, quickly.

That's all for this week

I know today’s newsletter was shorter than normal, but I am constantly asked about resources to find more inspiration, especially going into Q4 where you need a high volume of assets and creative to be successful. 

It’s Sunday night, so I hope you’re planning to get 9 hours of sleep tonight and wake up feeling ready to tackle the week. I’ll be in Austin this coming week, so if you’re in Austin as well, shoot me an email or a DM!

I’ll see you next Sunday. Same time, same place!