75% of marketers view a bold brand presence as critical to success and 81% expect its importance to grow in the next five years
TLDR Marketing 2025-08-29
News & Trends
Marketers see themselves as ‘bold’, but they aren’t (2 minute read)
A survey by DMEXCO found that 75% of marketers view a bold brand presence as critical to success and 81% expect its importance to grow in the next five years. While 64% considered themselves bold, only 8% said they had communicated in a strikingly bold way, 6.6% had launched a risky campaign, and 5% had taken a controversial stance. The boldest actions reported were entering new markets (17.4%), targeting untapped groups (10.7%), and publicly supporting a cause (8.8%). Fear of social media backlash (47%), concern for brand image (45.6%), and legal uncertainty (45%) were the main barriers holding marketers back.
The 12th Annual Blogger Survey: What Content Works in 2025? (17 minute read)
Long-form, highly visual content, influencer collaborations, and original research drove the strongest results. Publishing 2,000+ word articles led to 39% reporting strong results, while frequent influencer collaborations reached 37%, both above the 21% benchmark. Consistently using analytics improved outcomes, with 32% reporting strong results. Paid promotion and guest blogging also correlated with success, with 30% reporting strong results. Shortcuts like fully AI-written articles or ignoring analytics correlated with weaker performance.
Strategies & Tactics
Stuck in neutral: Regaining momentum after reactivation misses (3 minute read)
Buffer tested reactivation using timing, content, and personalization, but most efforts had little impact. Nudges at day 7 or 13, feature highlights, and repurposed weekly report emails produced minimal results. Personalizing emails and adding posting prompts for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Bluesky drove a modest +16% lift. Meanwhile, activation experiments like onboarding improvements, streak-at-risk emails, and goal-based nudges achieved better results. Reactivation requires high effort for low return, whereas activation builds habits early and shows scalable impact.
Use Reddit to extract chats for your content funnels (1 minute read)
Search Reddit using ‘site:reddit.com’ plus your target keywords and filter posts from the past month. Identify relevant feeds, export the conversations, and use AI to extract key motives, pain points, and topics. Segment the insights into your content plan and create targeted assets such as landing pages, FAQs, videos, and blog posts that address real customer needs. This process finds relevant content ideas to “help” our audiences.
Resources & Tools
10 Local SEO Strategies that Work in the AI Era (26 minute video)
Ross Simmonds breaks down 10 local SEO strategies for businesses to capture more local customers. He covers Google Business Profile optimization, local keyword research, and content creation tactics. The video also explains technical SEO for mobile-first indexing, AI-powered efficiency tools, and community engagement to boost rankings. Key stats show 92% of searchers pick businesses on page one, “open now near me” searches rose 400%, and voice search dominates 71% of local queries.
LinkedIn guide for beginners (2 minute read)
Growth on LinkedIn requires treating the platform as both a networking hub and a conversion tool. Focus your efforts on commenting meaningfully, messaging peers, and nurturing your niche. Post only when the message is strong, and structure your content around four key pillars: educational to establish credibility, broad themes to drive reach, sales content to activate opportunities, and personal stories to build trust. Before launching into any content strategy, refine your profile. It should speak directly to your target audience, highlight your offer clearly, and include a strong call to action above the fold.
Miscellaneous
Posted is better than perfect (8 minute read)
Wimbledon’s social strategy proves that speed, structure, and storytelling can drive massive impact. With nearly 6,000 posts in six weeks and over 2.7 billion video views, the team operated like a digital newsroom. Their guiding principles of ‘posted is better than perfect’ and ‘emotion over production’ enabled a high-volume output without sacrificing audience connection. Their content framework (campfire, bonfire, and firework) helped allocate resources efficiently across evergreen, mid-level, and high-impact content.
Brand vs. Demand in the Age of AI: The Balancing Act for CMOs (4 minute read)
Brand investment is regaining importance as AI-native companies shift focus from pure demand generation to building strong identities that differentiate them in crowded markets. Firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Lovable emphasize brand, communications, and community over heavily paid campaigns, using mission, voice, and customer experience as growth drivers. Lovable’s growth highlights how brand identity and experience can accelerate demand, with customers and influencers drawn to its approachable and human positioning. For CMOs, the challenge now is balancing demand with brand, as companies that lean only on demand risk blending into the noise, while the strongest growth comes from orchestrating both.
How software companies become cultural institutions (4 minute read)
Companies rooted in digital products are turning to physical publishing to create permanence, scarcity, and cultural weight. 37signals used books like Rework to turn company philosophies into both profit and marketing, generating customers and employees aligned with its values. Google launched Chrome with a printed comic that made the abstract browser feel tangible and collectible. Airbnb created Airbnbmag to position itself as a lifestyle brand, Stripe built Stripe Press to associate itself with intellectual authority, and Midjourney launched a magazine to give AI art legitimacy and scarcity. This strategy transforms digital brands into institutions with influence that extends beyond software.
Quick Links
Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps (6 minute read)
A ranked list of the top gen AI web products and mobile apps people are using.
Do not hide discount codes in emails (1 minute read)
Show discount codes immediately on pop-up success pages and then include them in follow-up emails.