Digital Marketing Advice

Psychology behind building objects of DESIRE. Lets talk about LIFESTYLE beauty, a territory beyond functionality. Think on aspirations, symbology, luxury, identity, and status. In lifestyle, desire is cultivated not just through product performance, but through emotional branding, scarcity, and curated experiences. you are looking for deep understanding of what your customers truly value, and what frustrations your brand can solve. The global premium cosmetics market is experiencing growth, with a market value of USD 153.68 Billion in 2024, and is projected to reach USD 353.93 Billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 8.70% >> PSYCHOLOGY OF DESIRE << Desire-driven purchases tap deeply into the brain’s EMOTIONAL and reward systems. When we encounter luxury or exclusive products, our brains release dopamine in anticipation of the reward, sparking motivation and craving. +72% consumers make purchase based on emotional connection with a brand or product. This anticipation is often stronger than the actual satisfaction of owning the item. Scarcity and limited availability trigger the amygdala, activating fear of missing out (FOMO) and increasing the product’s perceived VALUE. +332% conversion rates by Limited-time offers or “only 2 left” messages. +48% of online shoppers have purchased something due to FOMO. At the same time, mirror neurons make us subconsciously IMITATE influencers or aspirational figures who use these products, reinforcing the desire to buy. +84% Gen Z and Millennials are influenced by social media before making purchases. >>DESIRE BUILDING<< →Emotional triggers ⇒ Emotional design drives deep connection & impulse. →Dopamine surge ⇒ Reward anticipation, not the reward, excites the brain. →Scarcity ⇒ Limited triggers urgency & fear of missing out. →Mirror neurons ⇒ Aspirational figures builds subconscious imitation. →Exclusivity ⇒ Luxury signals status, elevating perceived self-worth. →Desire ⇒ Controlled access makes products feel more valuable. →Impulse buy ⇒ Emotional + social triggers pull quick decisions. >>RATIONALIZE MEMORIES ⇒ LOYALTY<< Emotional connection also plays a major role. The prefrontal cortex helps us RATIONALIZE emotionally-driven decisions, while the hippocampus links products to MEMORIES, making them more meaningful. Oxytocin fosters trust and LOYALTY when a brand aligns with personal values or tells a compelling story. In essence, we don’t just buy products, we buy identity, emotion, and experience. Final thoughts. In lifestyle beauty, products are desired, not just bought. It's about sparking emotion, not just solving problems. Build aspiration, connection, and identity by tapping into what truly drives your audience. Here’s my curated search of examples, get inspired for your next HIT! Featured Brands: Carolina Herrera Chanel Beautycrop Benefit Bubble Glossier Glow to Go Gucci Miu miu Rhode Some by me Tocobo #beautybusiness #luxurbusiness #beautyprofessionals #luxuryprofessionals

When L'Oréal uses AI to create new hair colors based on social media trends, they're in salons within weeks. Kraft Heinz—dead last in our study—still takes months to tweak a formula. After analyzing 26 major CPG companies at IMD's Center for Future Readiness, I discovered what separates winners from losers: The most future-ready companies treat consumer data like insider trading information. BACKGROUND: CPG in 2025 is brutal. Inflation persists. Gen-Z demands sustainability without premiums. Tariffs reshape supply chains daily. McKinsey & Company identified 150+ AI use cases for CPG transformation. Only 5 of 26 companies actually execute them. THE REVELATION: Coca-Cola didn't randomly launch Topo Chico Hard Seltzer. Their AI spotted the trend through social listening while competitors debated in boardrooms. By launch, they'd secured distribution nationwide. That's not innovation. That's prediction. What separates the top 5: L'Oréal (#1): 3.5% of sales to R&D. AI analyzes preferences real-time. Virtual try-on apps. Creates products from social trends. A 110-year company with startup velocity. The Coca-Cola Company (#2): Democratized AI internally. Every manager accesses demand forecasting. They analyze weather + social sentiment + sales simultaneously. These aren't tech companies selling beauty and beverages. They're prediction machines that happen to make products. THE WINNER'S FRAMEWORK: 1. AI at scale, not in pilots Winners integrate into workflows. Losers run demos. 2. Supply chains that anticipate Real-time visibility + AI forecasting = competitive firepower 3. D2C as intelligence goldmine 73% use multiple channels. Mine every interaction. 4. Disrupt yourself first Coca-Cola launched Costa Coffee, hard seltzers. Grew. Kraft Heinz protected legacy brands. Shrank. 5. Sustainable without premium Gen-Z spending hits $12T by 2030. They demand action at everyday prices. —— The inconvenient truth: Most CPG companies treat data like reporting instead of radar. Winners don't predict trends—they're already shipping products while competitors debate. Technological patience (knowing when to scale) + organizational agility (pivoting fast) = market domination. Three years from now, every CPG company operates like L'Oréal. Or they don't operate at all. P.S. Full Future Readiness Indicator here: https://bit.ly/3YTBzbX

The specialist marketer is dying. Meet the Full Stack Marketer. They don't just run ads or write copy. They own the entire growth engine. Here's what separates them from everyone else: ✦ Digital Marketing Not just Facebook ads. PPC, SEO, social, email - all channels. They test, optimise, scale what works. ✦ Analytics Data isn't scary. It's their superpower. Google Analytics, A/B testing, attribution. They measure everything that matters. ✦ Content Creation Writing, design, video - they do it all. Not perfectly. But fast and effective. Speed beats perfection in marketing. ✦ Tools and Software CRM, automation, AI tools - fluent in all. They connect systems others can't. Tech stack mastery = competitive edge. ✦ Project Management Juggling campaigns, deadlines, stakeholders. They ship on time, every time. Execution beats strategy without action. The old way: Hire 5 specialists The new way: One full stack marketer Companies are catching on. Small teams with broad skills. Beat large teams with narrow focus. You don't need to master everything. You need to be dangerous in everything. 70% proficiency across skills beats 100% in one. → Pick your weakest area → Spend 30 days learning basics → Apply it to a real project → Move to the next weakness In 6 months, you're unstoppable. Learning something new? Repost ♻️ for others.

India has 150 million+ people above the age 60 and there is a massive opportunity to keep them healthy & fit. But everyone’s focused on Gen Z and no one’s building for their parents. It’s a hard business but a big one. We’ve invested in two companies. Here’s why it’s tough and how one should crack it. Understand the reality first. 1. Elders don’t think of “health” as proactive. They’re conditioned to wait until something breaks before acting. You’re selling a solution to a problem they don’t know they have yet. 2. The 65-year-old needs it but their 35-year-old child pays for it. You're not selling to the elder. You’re selling to their guilt-driven kids in Gurgaon or US. The buyer ≠ the user. 3. Trust is everything and you don’t have it. Indian elders trust: Their doctor, astrologer & their neighbour Not apps. Not tech bros. Not AI. You can't growth hack trust. You earn it slowly, locally. 4. They don’t want new habits. They’ve had the same breakfast for 40 years. You’re not selling a product. You’re undoing decades of routine. 5. Distribution is hyperlocal. Elders don’t click Insta ads. They talk to the uncle in their colony. You scale building by building not by user cohorts. Yes, 150M+ elders. But it’s not one market. It’s a thousand tiny tribes. Different languages, cultures, food habits, family structures, and tech comfort levels. If it were easy, Tata or Reliance would’ve done it already. But it’s wide open now. The one who combines tech + trust + real care will win. So how do you crack it? 1. Think first principles & not trends Don’t build a “senior fitness app.” Ask: Why did they stop moving? What gives them joy? You’re selling independence, not health. 2. Design for peace, not features. One-click help, One daily routine, One trusted face. Great elder products feel like human care not software. 3. Human-first, tech-enable. Don’t replace the daughter. Support her. Train 100 amazing elder coaches. Build tools to help them scale. 4. Don't focus on CAC. Here, it’s about trust per acquisition. You’re not selling toothpaste. You’re asking to be let into their daily life. Start offline. Build trust then tech. 5. You’re in the business of habit change & not selling an app or a pill. Get them to walk 15 minutes a day. Add protein to breakfast. Laugh more. Sleep better. Small wins compound. Don’t build for scale first. Build for consistency. Be in the business of habit change. 6. This isn’t a hackable D2C play. It’s a decade-long trust business. Build for one community. Get to know 100 elders by name. Solve deep, boring problems with elegance. Everyone’s chasing the next billion youth users. But the hidden opportunity lies in serving the first 150 million elders. The elder care market in India isn’t just underserved. It’s misunderstood and needs long-term play. Founders who crack this will build generational companies.

Candid Thoughts About Marketing Jobs (From a Sitting CMO & Former CRO) Lately I have been thinking a lot about the question about whether AI is taking away jobs. Sure fire way to stop a dinner conversation in its tracks. I believe it's an oversimplification to say AI is killing all jobs. The nuanced view is the old-school, single-threaded marketing job is dead. That means what’s drying up are the roles where someone can just “do social,” “run ads,” or “write blogs” in isolation. What’s rising is far more interesting and much more difficult to hire for. As a sitting CMO and former CRO, I’ve built both brand engines and revenue engines. I have also hired around 300 people across my companies so far. And here’s what I’m not finding in the market: People who can create great content and know how to distribute it creatively People who can use multiple AI tools at once, not just dabble in ChatGPT People who look at performance, ask “why?”, and run experiments (this is especially true on the brand side) People who can tie tools together and cull great insights So here is my bold claim: The Modern Marketer Is a Multi-Threaded Operator If you want a future in marketing, here's what you need: AI fluency – Can you use tools like ChatGPT, and Midjourney and Tofu and Qualified and Gong while using Zapier to build an execution machine, not just generate one-off tasks? Oh and can build web pages fast on Webflow to iterate? First-principles thinking – Can you deconstruct what makes content work and rebuild it better? Copy-without-ego instinct – Can you scan the world, see what’s working, and shamelessly replicate and remix it to your advantage? Data curiosity – Are you running A/B tests, watching the numbers, spotting patterns, and then changing your strategy accordingly? Emotional detachment – Can you take feedback, kill your darlings, and learn from failure without spiraling? If not, this is your wake-up call. You don’t need an MBA. But you do need to become a multi-threaded athlete who blends creativity, performance, systems thinking, and rapid learning. The Jobs Are There: The Talent Isn’t The truth is, I’m not seeing a talent shortage. I’m seeing a readiness gap. There are plenty of marketing roles out there, but they don’t look like the job people trained for 5 years ago. They look like five jobs in one. And the people who will win are the systems thinkers, tool hackers and realists. If you want to be in the new age of marketing, this is your time. The marketers who can learn these new skills will have more leverage, more career upside, and more autonomy than ever. The era of “staying in your lane” is over. The best lanes now are on-ramps to a new kind of full-stack operator. Good luck!

Attribution is overrated. Incrementality is what actually matters Every new-age brand wants to know what’s working. Meta ROAS is looking good. CAC is steady. Revenue is growing But here’s the truth: Your Meta ad might get the conversion. But did it cause the conversion? That’s the difference between attribution and incrementality. Most dashboards, attribution tools, and agency reports stop at attribution. But if you’re a brand selling across Amazon, Flipkart, GT, MT, Q-com, and D2C—pure attribution will always lie to you Because the sale might happen on Amazon. But it might have been nudged by a Meta video or a YouTube bumper ad 4 days ago. You don’t need a full-blown Marketing Mix Model to get started. There are simpler, street-smart ways to directionally understand what’s working—and what’s not. Here are 4 that have worked for us at Atomberg: 1. Geo Split Testing Pick two similar markets. Run campaigns in one. Don’t run in the other. Then track: • Branded search volume • Sell-through on marketplaces • Secondary sales from GT counters If the test market moves faster than the control, you’re seeing true lift. That’s incrementality. 2. First-Time Buyer Growth vs Returning Buyer Growth Track whether your growth is coming from first-time buyers or repeats. If your campaigns are just bringing back old customers—you’re not creating net new demand. But if there’s a spike in new buyers across Amazon, Flipkart, D2C—your campaigns are likely working at an incremental level 3. Paid Traffic vs Organic Trend Lines If paid traffic, clicks and spends are going up—but your organic sales or branded search isn’t moving—you’re likely just harvesting demand that already existed. But if organic lifts alongside paid—your ads are creating interest. Not just closing it. Directionally, this is one of the simplest sanity checks most teams ignore. 4. Channel Crossover + Offline Signal Mapping Your Meta ad may not show up in last-click attribution. But it might have nudged the consumer to visit your store or buy on Amazon. You can detect this through: • Post-purchase surveys (Where did you first hear about us?) • Branded search + store footfall spikes in campaign-active cities • And most powerfully—offline signals passed back to Meta At Atomberg, we pass back data from installations and warranty registrations—including pincode and purchase timelines Sometimes, we’re even able to identify this at a unique customer level through their cookies for warranty registration This has helped us understand true incrementality of perf marketing campaigns even for offline sales If you’re only measuring ROAS, you might scale what’s only taking credit for sale about to happen anyway If you chase incrementality, you’ll scale what’s working. For more details, read the full post- link in first comment.

Marketing careers aren’t dying because of AI. They’re splitting because of it. I was having a conversation yesterday about what happens to the generation of marketers who built their careers through digital, transformation and the convergence of marketing and technology. I think we are entering a period where that broad digital marketing profile will increasingly split into two very distinct career paths. For the last decade or so, digital marketing rewarded people who could operate across disciplines. Digital was still evolving, so companies needed people who could sit in the middle and make sense of it. That middle is becoming harder to define. 1. Marketing Systems Leaders: One path is moving deeper into data, technology and product. These marketers will increasingly need to understand marketing technology, customer data, AI, automation, product experience and the systems that sit behind acquisition, engagement and retention. Product marketing increasingly sits naturally in this space. 2. Marketing Craft Leaders: The other path is moving deeper into marketing itself:brand, positioning, consumer understanding, communications, creative strategy and the ability to build distinctiveness in a market where execution is becoming increasingly commoditised. I'm seeing that companies are becoming much more deliberate about what's the role of marketing and the marketing hires. AI is accelerating this shift. There will still be exceptional people who can bridge both worlds. In fact, I suspect they will be disproportionately valuable. But the generic middle is going to become much harder to defend. Where do you think the next generation of digital and transformation marketers will build their depth?

Back in 2007, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman taught a private master class to tech founders including Larry Page and Jeff Bezos. The following year, Elon Musk joined. Among the topics: priming, where subtle cues shape our decisions without us realizing it. In that room, Musk pressed on subliminal versus explicit persuasion: “Does the hidden beat the obvious?” Kahneman's answer: "There are many situations in which subliminal effects are stronger than superliminal effects." Translation: Hidden influences shape behavior more than obvious ones. You can't resist what you don't notice. Later after that session, Bezos connected the dots: “You can choose your choice architect.” You either design the decision environment, or it designs you. Amazon designed theirs. One-click purchasing removes the pause where doubt lives. Every additional step is an exit ramp. They chose zero exits. Google designed theirs. That empty white homepage isn't minimal by accident. No portals, no distractions. Just one thought: search. Most companies let chaos choose. Cluttered onboarding. Buried CTAs. Friction everywhere. They're not architects. They're accidents. So how do you become the architect instead of the accident? 1. Choose your pricing architect: Sell your core product for $99/month. Then offer a bundle with two add-ons for $119. The bundle makes the core feel essential. 2. Choose your onboarding architect: When users first sign up, make their first action create immediate value - a report generated, first customer added, dashboard live. Success in 30 seconds primes confidence in everything that follows. In contrast, when you make the frame obvious, you lose it. Slap "Most Popular!" on everything and watch trust erode. The moment users detect manipulation, they create their own frame - one where you're untrustworthy. Kahneman warned Musk about this directly. Covert cues work precisely because they're not noticed. Priming is architecture, not decoration. By the time logic kicks in, the frame has already decided. Because you’re already an architect. The only question is whether you know what you're building.

"I want to work in marketing, but I don't know where to start." After 5 years of running The Ninth Semester, I realized the Marketing industry is one of the top sought-after career paths for early-career professionals.Besides the obvious ways to break into Marketing, such as gaining relevant work experience and building your portfolio, the next best thing you can do is invest in the skills employers care about in marketing hires. A new LinkedIn Skills on the Rise report (https://lnkd.in/dA8Du_M6) highlights the 10 fastest-growing marketing skills based on year-over-year growth in skill additions and hiring data. From AI Literacy to Visual Storytelling, these are the skills that'll help you become a competitive candidate. I took the list a step further and curated roles to target, as well as free or low-cost courses and certificates to help you improve your skill set from platforms such as Coursera, Skillshare, HubSpot Academy, YouTube University, creators such as Adrian Per, and more You can view the full list of resources here: https://lnkd.in/dwugBB-8

Website traffic was a valuable metric correlated to growth. Now it may be a vanity metric, not correlated to growth. Search has been disrupted. Visits to your website are declining. So, marketers - what now? The search landscape was already shifting (I talked about this at INBOUND last year). Now, the change is accelerating dramatically: - AI Overviews appear in 43% of Google searches – when they do, organic CTR drops by nearly 35%. - Google’s AI Mode and audio AI overviews are coming – they will cause clicks to collapse further. - More buyers are using LLMs to find information, ChatGPT search in Europe grew 3.7x in six months. So, what should marketers do? And how can AI help? 1. Be everywhere and diversify your channels The days of relying solely on Google search are way over. You need to show up on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, podcasts, and in niche communities. The good news? AI makes multi-channel, multi-format content creation scalable – even for small teams. 2. Be specific with context In the past, broad informational content was the way to rank in Google. Today, buyers expect results deeply relevant to them, whether they’re on Google, LLMs, or Reddit. You need specific content that reflects your expertise and resonates with your buyers. 3. Optimize for conversion, not clicks Traffic was once the lever you could pull. Now, conversion is where the opportunity lies. AI enables you to deliver personal messages that drive better conversion. Don’t ask, “How do we get more blog visits?” Ask, “How do we convert more prospects into customers across all channels?” The changes in search are sending shockwaves across marketing teams and media companies everywhere. The era of traffic-based marketing is ending. But a new era full of opportunity is just beginning. Super exciting times for marketers to reinvent the playbook!