Your Weekly Pencil - March 23, 2022

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In this newsletter you’ll find:

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• Blog: Pencil's DTC Ad Library
• Ad of the Week
• How to wreck your e-comm business

If a friend forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.

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Join Our New Community

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We've had users asking us for the last year to start a community where they discuss, connect, and learn from their peers in the e-commerce & growth space. We're excited to be doing this now with you as partners!

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Some topics we'll discuss:

• performance: frameworks, trends, ad account setup - etc
• pencil use cases
• creative needs: assets, best channels for content, tools to use
• e-commerce marketing strategy

Are there any topics that you'd like to discuss? Sign up here Join the Community

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Pencil's DTC Ad Library: Q1

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Our goal in starting this series is to share what the best DTC brands are doing across paid social and how you can leverage it. The three standout brands were analyzed using the following criteria:

• Top of Funnel Traffic, Copy, Their Creative
• How they construct their messaging
• What kinds of assets they use
• How they execute layouts and composition
• How they work with narrative, format and duration
• Whether they do (or don't) lean into fancy effects

If you'd like to dive deeper Read more

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Ad of the week from Amber Electric

Our friends at Amber Electric are testing a multitude of videos and statics, working to bring renewable energy to everyone in Australia. We thought we'd showcase a static ad for a change. Evocative Imagery, Standout Colors, Direct Language = Success.

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Pencil Is Now Live On Shopify!

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What's different

• You can connect your Shopify store & Meta ads manager to quickly import brand, assets & data

• (this is a HUGE reduction in time and effort!)
• 7 Day Free Trial: Try AI ad generation, insights, and predictions

Try Pencil For Free!

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Content That Matters

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Meta to test new tools to give brands control over ad placement on its platforms

Meta, will begin testing new content tools designed to give advertisers (you) control over where your ads are shown on FB/IG feeds, the company announced on Thursday. The tools will allow companies to prevent their ads from being placed next to unsuitable content, such as posts about politics, tragedy or violence. In other words, you get to choose what movie your movie trailer previews with.

Why this matters: knowing what content you want to be associated with is part of your paid strategy, some content you think will help might not drive your performance down. This means you'll have to experiment with where your ads labd.

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The 5 Step Ad Account Audit

There are many schools of thought on how to audit a Facebook ad account. We found this from Cory Dobbin one to be both comprehensive and digestible...no small feat! It focuses on:

• Spending on Capped Assets
• CPM's & CTR's
• Spend Balance (a couple of great hacks here)
• Conversion Rates

Why this matters ->  re-auditing your account from different perspectives regularly allows you to find new tests to run that can grow the business.

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The Producer Economy Is Changing Influencer Marketing

Influencers? Creators? Now...Producers? Influencer marketing is evolving into what's being called "the producer economy" consisting of content creators who seek to build their own media brands that are independent of social media platforms. This push for greater control over distribution also affects brands as they build their own media networks to engage consumers.

Why this matters -> as you look for ways to own your brand story and relationship with your customers, taking a page out of the creator's book and owning a space that is dedicated to your story, can pay dividends across multiple adjacent "revenue" driving channels. The reason: awareness drives action.

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Thread of the week

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Many times we share about how you can grow your business, but there are just as many ways you can tank your business. Check out this thread from Alex P to learn the common mistakes.

• ROAS-first media planning
• Hot Items & Viral Traffic
• Brand Repositioning
• "Growth" Thru Retention
• Raising Prices
  

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ICYMI

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Why Aren't My Ads Working?

Pillars for Growth

How We Sourced Assets For Our Brand

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Something different

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Great debate podcast featuring Adam Grant and Brene Brown about Vulnerability in the workplace - it's a very fascinating topic, with great insights that I think you'll find insightful. Enjoy!

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Will

Co-founder & CEO, Pencil

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