Full Transcription
[Introduction] – 00:00
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to This Week In Marketing show. Also known as a TWIMshow. I’m your host Sajid Islam and today. I’ll be going over the notable news and updates in the digital marketing space from the week of September 2021.
[Update 1 – TikTok Shared Holiday Marketing Guide to Assist with Strategic Planning] – 00:12
Today, first of all we’re gonna start off with a quick update from TikTok. TikTok has shared holiday marketing guide to assist with strategic planning. This is just a guide. Go ahead and check it out. They’re also going to publish more tips next week on, you know how to use this guide. Also, just to let you know, TikTok has announced their. Schedules for TikTok world, which is basically something we covered in our show a couple of weeks back when it was announced that they’re going to do what it took word he took. Word is similar to what Salesforce does called Dreamforce. Facebook does F8 something, a community gathering where they’re gonna show highlight some of the. You know. You know, upcoming features, lessons, things like that. So if you’re interested in that, go ahead and you can look it up. We’re gonna put the link into a show notes page with that. Let’s move on to the next one.
[Update 2 – LinkedIn Launches Updated Lead Gen Forms Integration] – 01:12
So Next up it’s LinkedIn. LinkedIn has launched and updated lead Gen forms integration with Zapier. Personally, I really, really like what they’ve done just because this is very, very handy. You know, I wish other platforms would take a cue or take lessons. From LinkedIn and copy the same format just because you know if someone is filling out a you know if it’s filling out a like in a lead Gen form, we can now add that person to a web as a web erase trend in zoom. Lots of things that was otherwise. Not available and I’ve had this issue with Facebook events in the past where people would say raise their hand whether it’s an ad or an event and I would have to manually like and inform them hey, copy them, paste them. This legion automatically is great. OK that’s all with link LinkedIn. Let’s move on to the next one, which is Microsoft.
[Update 3 – Microsoft Advertising Launches Marketing with Purpose Business Attributes] – 02:14
Microsoft Advertising has a new attribute that allows businesses to indicate the dedication to responsibility and what they’re calling it is a purpose business marketing with purpose business attribute, right? The marketing with purpose business attribute allows you to communicate easily. And quickly and easily how your brand is for someone like me. So again, to explain to you how this all works, if I’m not making any sense is, you know basically say if you are a business that is environmental focus or you are say. Eco friendly business. You would be able to put that. Tag in your ads so that when someone looks at your ad and it’s speaking to that person who is looking for an eco friendly option, it’s gonna help you to stand up. I like it like you know how Google ads have called. Site extensions and colored extensions and well, you can do that with a call out extensions, but this tag itself sets Microsoft advertising. Again, being advertising apart. I like that right? And then you can use call out extensions and cycling in session for other things that you would not have been otherwise. You’d have probably missed out. That’s all for Microsoft. Let’s move on to the next one.
[Update 4 – Facebook Shared Its Content Distribution Guidelines] – 03:39
The next one we have is Facebook. So Facebook came out and shared their content distribution guidelines. Again, this is something you know they have shared on and off bits and pieces. They thought, you know, it’s better to, you know, put them all together in one location in the transparency, etc. And talk about it. Overall, this is a for your. Personal profile. This is not for your page, but overall it’s a good tool to a good tool. Got a good page to visit and look. Look at if you are someone who is marketing primarily from your personal Facebook page or personal Facebook profile. OK, only because you know, there’s a lot of things, but three things that I think you should know is Facebook looks at people’s feedback on your. Posts. So if you post something and a majority of the people are you know. Commenting negative stuff then that’s gonna hit you back. And I’ve seen some of the, you know, direct market shares on Facebook who I’m connected with will say, hey, if you’re gonna talk negative, don’t even participate in this. Right. I’m gonna ban you. I’m gonna block you. Things like that. So I think that’s some people are using this because, you know, if Facebook says up. You know you post something like, let’s just say. About uh, I don’t know. I don’t know. Margarita, you know? Yeah. Margarita recipe, right. And everybody said, oh, that sucks. The sucks. That sucks. Well, Facebook has an algorithm which is not understand that that’s a recipe that they don’t like. They’re gonna think. Are you wrote something that, you know people don’t like and they’re gonna. Reduce your distribution. That’s so. That’s one. The other thing is they want you to create a high quality, accurate content so you know as a way to incentivize you to create high quality, accurate content is basically they’re telling you to, you know, they’re gonna show your post to a lot more people. And if it’s late and if it’s. God. Then they’re gonna show it to less people. Right. So keep that in mind. The third thing they’re saying is fostering a safer community. And while some community may be problematic for community, regardless of the intent, so you could say something that’s accurate, but maybe the people on your post, on your profile, people commenting on don’t like it. And then maybe also try to report to Facebook. You’re gonna definitely gonna get it reduced. You know, distribution. Now remember this distribution is very different from other stuff, which is a community standards. This is basically this is the rule of thumb that they use for content. Got past community standards but falls into the Gray area. They’re gonna use this thing. Check it out. The link is gonna be in our show notes. So if you wanna read and you know, really look at things and how it may affect your page as well, check it out. If not, I hope these three tips helps you to kind of, you know, create post that allows you to. You know, get greater rich now you you know a lot of people are using the personal profile to further their cause, promote their business and get new leads. So this is very helpful for people who are doing that. Next up,
[Update 5 – Facebook Testing ‘Community Awards’ to Encourage Engagement in Groups] – 06:58
Still on the Facebook land is Facebook is testing quality hours to encourage engagements in Group. It’s just a new feature that trying out many things so that you know people in your group kind of you know get rewarded for, you know engaging a whole lot and you know. Being active on your group, right? So the idea here is that rewarding, more engaging and more beneficial interactions that you encourage individuals to interact more often. While the awards also highlight to each other group members what kind of comments you want to see, which could help to over improve overall interaction, which is great. The problem here is that Facebook itself is a problem, right? They cannot get out of their own way for you. Ask me, why is that? Well, I say that because. Imagine. I belong to so many groups. Most of the time I don’t even get updates. Now in two for Facebook’s, you know, creating your Facebook cannot show me updates from all the groups every day because you know it’s gonna flood my inbox. Well in that case, they should have some form of notification, right? I have like, let’s just see if I belong to 20 different RSS feeds. In my outlook, I will have updates from all of them, but I will know but the number of updates that are coming into that each folder so Facebook can figure out. I’m sure they have smart people in the UI UX team who can figure this out. It’s Facebook who doesn’t show me the updates all unless I remember to go in and then you know they’re saying oh wait, it’s just it’s a mess. Facebook is a company. I think it’s just a bit it’s become. It’s becomes too big that they themselves do not know. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing forgettable right hand left hand, even though you know a thumb doesn’t know what the middle finger is doing and so forth. OK. With that, let’s move on to the next last I think it’s our next update from Facebook. At the last one is like
[Update 6 – Facebook Updates Business Ad Options in Reaction to iOS Update] – 08:42
Facebook’s it’s updating business adoptions in reaction to iOS updates, so if you know, we covered this extensively that with iOS 14.5 apples app transparency, ATT tracking has been enabled, which basically allows our users to opt out of tracking and which is why Facebook’s business has actually taken a hit. So much so that Facebook has warned that their cute three earnings will probably be impacted quite a bit, and their vice president of product marketing has said in a blog post that they estimated the problem losing or 15% at a minimum of 15% are conversions, which basically means people are. You know, advertisers are flying in the dark anyhow. Having said that, what this update is all about is Facebook is realizing that to counter this issue ’cause they’re they’re business that’s in facing a lot of headwinds. They’re realizing you know they’re adding new add options, which is like you know, in ads now, businesses can choose messaging platforms where they’re available to chat and they will use. That Facebook will use that chat default chat app in your adbased on when a conversation is most likely to happen. So my business market and grow, which publishes this podcast say is running an ad and we know we’re not gonna get accurate data. So what they’re gonna say is well, I could run an ad where people are going to click on it and they’re gonna. Go to my chat now. If I’m on messenger, I’m gonna go pop up messenger. If I have WhatsApp, they’re gonna pop up a message in WhatsApp and so forth. And Facebook is gonna basically allow us that whole thing. The whole, you know, it doesn’t matter for me, the user. I will message you, the user who’s going to message my business. It’s going to come into whatever platform I am on, right. So whether it’s from Instagram to WhatsApp, WhatsApp to whatever our Facebook to WhatsApp, it’s just gonna happen. Facebook is saying that we’re gonna make it happen because that’s where so. Facebook is basically asking that if you do that, what’s gonna happen is you will probably. Have conversions as. Oh, someone clicked on the ad. They went to this message and sent you a message. So that basically means it’s a conversion, correct? Because again, Facebook needs to report you the data like you know, hey, because of the $10 you spent, you got two leads or one leads. And my Facebook is under reporting, which is what’s happening right now. You’re not going to rely on the platform as it is. The platform was going wonky when it comes to analytics. So that’s the main gist of what they said. There are other things like they’re introducing file managers so that you know you can use more, better content planning from for launching your ads and your stuff like that. But you know, you don’t really wanna be bored with that. But if you want to hear about those things that you know. Read the blog post or show Nos page and you will get it over there OK with that. That was the end of Facebook. Let’s move on to Google.
[Update 7 – Google Launches “Things to Do” Free Listing & Paid Ads. Plus Eco-certification Badge for Hotels] – 11:38
Well, Google has launches a new form of adcalled Things to do, which is a free listing as well as speed adds adplus ECO certification badge for hotels. This is again you know if you have you know if you are say. Someone searching for? Yeah, let me see. For example, if someone searching for, you know, Statue of Liberty, Tokyo Tower, Google will now show you booking link links for a basic admission and other ticketing options when available. And you can do this for free, right? Add your listings for free. But of course if you want to show up higher, you gotta pay Mr Google some money. All these platforms are all about money and dance. Just to let you know. Lastly, you know they have a go friendly options, so if your hotel has a eco friendly rating from one of their you know providers that Google trusts then they’re gonna show that in your ads or in your listing. That’s all about Google is said. That let’s move on to the next one,
[Update 8 – Google Ads Advertiser Page Focuses on Transparency] – 12:34
which is Google ads. Advertiser page focuses on transparency, you know Facebook Luke has this for a long time where you can go to our, you know, Facebook page and you can see what ads they’re running. And from there you could basically see what your competition, what ads your competition is running. Apparently this is how I look at it. Like you know where this is basically is like now you can go see what someone is, what adds they’re running for the last 30 days. It’s amazing tool. While Facebook, Google is doing it out of their own, you know. Goodness of their heart, if I may say that, but I feel like, you know, this is a great thing for us marketers. Now we can look at our competitors and not necessarily be obsessed with the computers, but basically see what’s working, what’s not working, what as they’re running and get ideas. I mean, I love doing this. I’ll tell you. I love looking at ads. I love what my competition is doing, not because I’m so obsessed that I cannot. Before, it’s just that I get ideas from other places. Like I look at different industry as well, so check it out and all you have to do is when you see a Google ads weather all you gotta do is about this ad and it takes you to the. Advertising advertisers page and off you go. And Next up we have is Google,
[Update 9 – Google Publishes New, Practical Guide on Key Ad Creative Best Practices and Tips] – 13:49
Google publishers new Practical guide on key adcreatives best practices and tips. It’s a 30 page guide on the link is going to be in our show, notes the three, the four things that I want to share this podcast with you all is that. Google says lead with a clear call to action. Again, that’s a no brainer ’cause we all know that, but sometimes you forget, so it’s good that Google is reminding that next thing Google is saying connect more authentic authentically with wide variety of assets. Build number three is built for smaller screens. I’m guilty of this because sometimes I forget that, you know, people are gonna view or add or view or things on small screens. And we build things on a monitor desktop and we view it on your desktop and with off we go. And there was new when we look at it mobile screens and we left shocked. So keep that in mind, number four is give you creative time to test. So don’t publish something today and think you know you’re not getting it’s not working just because by tomorrow nothing changed. It usually takes a few days to a week to for dinner to come in, so give it some time. That’s all the key take away, but definitely check out the guide. It’s gonna be helpful if you’re in the marketing space Next up.
[Update 10 – Google Ads Phrase & Broad Match Keyword Preferability] – 15:00
We have is Google ads have shared A blog post where they talked about phrase match and broad match keyword and preferability basically what this means is like you know how does Google decide which adwhich keyword to use and when to use what right it’s something if you don’t ever ties it. This is something good for you to know, absolutely, and I feel like, you know, this warrants A blog post, and we may have actually do a blog post or video training, but quickly let’s say someone searches for for sushi delivery near me and you have the broad match keyword, keyword, sushi delivery and sushi delivery near me. Before this update, both of these keywords would be eligible to serve. Now the keyword sushi delivery me near me is preferred because it is identical to the search term. Remember, someone is searching sushi delivery near me and you have both sushi delivery and sushi delivery near me as keywords. OK. No. Note that if you have, if you have an eligible exact match keyword that is identical to the query, it will still be preferred over the phrase and the broad match keyword. That’s what Google is saying so. You know, to someone who’s just listening to this podcast and who’s not running Google ads, it probably will not, you know, turn you get you excited about this. But if you’re running Google ads, campaign search keywords and you want to know how to place your keywords and you know what, to what you will get matched. This is something good because. This presents whether you’re paying a top dollar for, you know, cost per click, or whether you are bringing your cost per click down. That’s all. It’s how Google is going to match things. I’m glad Google is sharing this. So, uh, that’s all, but what happens last night before I sign off is like, what happens when a search term is not identical to any of your keywords, right? So that’s when Google is gonna use adrank to determine which keyword was served when multiple keywords were were mashed and none. We’re identical to the search right ’cause remember someone is searching sushi delivery near me, and you probably have sushi delivery, right? So how will Google decide which one to match? Well, it’s gonna use this ad rank, which is another off Google secret formula with our little bit of its bits and pieces of information that Google has shared over the years. And again, someone who’s been working with Google Apps for a while. All of this, but for you, Mr. Listener or Miss Listener, who’s listening to this podcast, all I will tell you is that this is a good thing from Google in terms of how they’re gonna match keywords because it helps you to structure your ad groups or your keyword positioning. Well. And of course, at the end of the day, you should always look at your source. OK.
[Closing] – 17:56
With that, folks, that’s it for this weekend marketing. Now you know everything to be in the know if you’d like to read more make sure you visit our show page where you will find the links to these articles. Once again, this is your host Sajid Islam signing off until next week. Take care. Bye bye.
Thank you for tuning in this week, it was a pleasure to serve you all. Hit the subscribe button so that you remember to sign on next week. Same place, same time for another round of This Week In Marketing.
1. TikTok Shared Holiday Marketing Guide to Assist with Strategic Planning (0:12) – This week, TikTok has published part one of its 2021 Holiday Marketing guide, which outlines some key usage stats, important shopping dates to note, and even provides a calendar overview for planning your outreach.
TikTok will provide more tips next week – you can check out the full overview here, or the infographic summary below.
2. LinkedIn Launches Updated Lead Gen Forms Integration (1:12) – LinkedIn has made collecting audience data a little easier with the launch of a new Event Registration trigger in the Lead Generation Forms integration for Zapier, enabling you to connect your gathered lead gen forms info with third-party tools and apps.
For example, using the Zapier/LinkedIn lead gen integration, you could create an automation flow that automatically adds a webinar registrant in Zoom every time someone signs up for your event, or you could add all Lead Gen Forms responses to a Google Sheet for easy sorting and retargeting.
3. Microsoft Advertising Launches Marketing with Purpose Business Attributes (2:14) – New attributes from Microsoft Advertising allow businesses to indicate their dedication to “responsibility, how your brand values align with the values of your customers, and how your brand is being inclusive,” said an announcement from Microsoft Advertising.
“Marketing with Purpose Business Attributes allow you to communicate quickly and easily how your brand is ‘for someone like me.’ They allow you to be authentic, which is the key attribute to building trust with customers,” said the blog.
Marketing with Purpose. This initiative is exclusive to Microsoft Advertising and follows the lead the company has taken with its Marketing with Purpose playbook and course. The idea behind the initiative is to “build a brand that’s welcomed into people’s lives by earning genuine trust, upholding their values, and inclusively advertising.”
Attributes included. The attributes advertisers can choose from fall under four main categories: inclusion, environmental, community/social responsibility, and accessibility. Within those categories, there are 32 attributes that a business can choose.
4. Facebook Shared Its Content Distribution Guidelines (3:39) – On Sep 23, Facebook published Content Distribution Guidelines to share more detail on how content is distributed on Facebook. While the Community Standards make it clear what content is removed from Facebook because they don’t allow it on the platform, the Content Distribution Guidelines make it clear what content receives a reduced distribution on News Feed because it’s problematic or low quality. Many of these guidelines have been shared in various announcements, but in efforts to provide clarity and make them more accessible, they brought them together in one easy-to-navigate space in their Transparency Center.
There are three principal reasons why they might reduce the distribution of content:
- Responding to People’s Direct Feedback: They listen to people’s feedback about what people like and don’t like seeing on Facebook and make changes to News Feed in response.
- Incentivizing Creators to Invest in High-Quality and Accurate Content: They want people to have interesting new material to engage within the long term, so they’re working to set incentives that encourage the creation of these types of content.
- Fostering a Safer Community: Some content may be problematic for their community, regardless of the intent. They’ll make this content more difficult for people to encounter.
5. Facebook Testing ‘Community Awards’ to Encourage Engagement in Groups (6:58) – Facebook’s trying out another way to boost positive contributions in groups, with a new feature called ‘Community Awards’ now in live testing.
The idea is that by rewarding more engaging, more beneficial interactions, that you can encourage individual users to interact more often, while the awards will also highlight to other group members what types of comments you want to see, which could help to improve overall interaction.
Facebook’s tried similar group engagement markers in the past, with ‘Top Fan’ and other badge types to recognize key contributors.
6. Facebook Updates Business Ad Options in Reaction to iOS Update (8:42) – Apple’s recent privacy changes messed up Facebook’s Ad business so much so that the company warned that the impact of Apple’s privacy changes will more severely impact its Q3 earnings. Vice president of product marketing Graham Mudd said in the blog post that Facebook estimates that in aggregate, it has been underreporting iOS web conversions by approximately 15%; with individual advertisers falling into a broad range. Mudd said the company believes real-world conversions, such as application installs and sales, are higher than what is being reported to advertisers, writing, “We’ve heard from many of you that the impact on your advertising investment has been greater than you expected. The cost of achieving your business outcome may have increased and it’s also gotten harder to measure your campaigns on our platform.”
Now to counter this issue, Facebook has rolled out new features that include expanded click-to-chat options from ads where “businesses can choose all the messaging platforms where they’re available to chat, and we’ll default the chat app in your ad based on where a conversation is most likely to happen,” according to the announcement.
You can also start a WhatsApp chat from an Instagram profile, and the company will “begin testing paid and organic tools to help small businesses find and qualify leads directly within the Instagram app,” said Facebook. New communication options include a test to allow “businesses to manage emails through Inbox and send remarketing emails from Facebook Business Suite,” as well.
“We’re also introducing File Manager, a new feature that allows businesses to easily create, manage and post content within Facebook Business Suite. Lastly, we’re making post-testing available in Facebook Business Suite to let businesses test and compare multiple versions of a post to see which one people are more likely to engage with,” said the announcement from Facebook.
7. Google Launches “Things to Do” Free Listing & Paid Ads. Plus Eco-certification Badge for Hotels (11:38) – Google is introducing new organic and paid features for travel and leisure businesses, including ticket booking links and pricing in search results, new “Things to do” ads, and an eco-certified badge for hotel listings
In addition to showing general information when users search for attractions, such as the Statue of Liberty or Tokyo Tower, for example, Google will now also show booking links for basic admission and other ticketing options (when available).
The company also has plans for a wider rollout of this feature: “In the months ahead, we’ll also begin showing information and booking links for experiences in a destination, like wine tasting in Paris or bike tours in California,” the search engine said.
Google is also introducing a new paid product for travel and leisure businesses: Things to do ads (shown below).
These ads will appear above the search results when users search for tours, activities, and local attractions on Google Search. They show details such as images, reviews, pricing and include a booking link for the activity, and are shown to users based on their search terms, location, and other related details.
Things to do ads are an automated format that uses data from your inventory feed based on the ad group label. Advertisers can designate a budget and target users based on their country of residence and device type. Except for target impression share, all bidding strategies available for Search campaigns are also available for Things to do campaigns. Google’s Help Center has more details on how to get started with this new offering.
Lastly, beginning this week, hotels that are certified for high standards of sustainability from certain independent organizations, such as EarthCheck or Green Key, will have an eco-certified badge next to their name, in the search results.
8. Google Ads Advertiser Page Focuses on Transparency (12:34) – “To give users of our products even more transparency, we are enhancing ad disclosures with new advertiser pages. Users can access these disclosures in our new ‘About this ad’ menu to see the ads a specific verified advertiser has run over the past 30 days,” said Google in an announcement on Sep 22, 2021
As part of the company’s advertiser transparency initiative, Google Ads introduced their advertiser identity verification program as well as their “About this ad” information this past year. The new Advertiser Page program takes that transparency for searchers to the next level.
“This transparency helps users learn more about the company behind a specific ad. It also helps differentiate credible advertisers in the ecosystem, while limiting the ability of bad actors to misrepresent themselves,” according to the announcement blog. Searchers can report any ad policy violations they believe an ad is breaching. From there a Google team member reviews it and takes the ad down if the violations are found to be true.
“[The advertiser page] will be generated based on the approved ads running and the information in their account. In terms of information about the advertiser, we will continue to show the advertiser’s name and location,” according to a Google representative.
9. Google Publishes New, Practical Guide on Key Ad Creative Best Practices and Tips (13:49) – If you’re looking to optimize your Google marketing approach, then this will help – this week, Google has published a new, 30-page guide to its various ad tools and options, which provides a range of valuable insights and pointers to assist in your holiday marketing strategy.
You can download the full guide here, but here is my key takeaway.
- Lead with a clear call to action (CTA)
- Connect more authentically with a wide variety of assets
- Build for smaller screens
- Give your creatives time to test
10. Google Ads Phrase & Broad Match Keyword Preferability (15:00) – A phrase match or broad match keyword that is identical to a query is now always preferred as long as it is eligible to match, Google announced on Thursday. In addition, the company has provided new details on how keyword matching works when a search is identical to a given keyword as well as when a search is not identical to any of an advertiser’s keywords.
Here’s an example provided by Google: “Let’s say someone searches for ‘sushi delivery near me’, and you have the broad match keywords sushi delivery and sushi delivery near me. Before this update, both of these keywords would be eligible to serve. Now, the keyword sushi delivery near me is preferred because it is identical to the search term. Note that if you have an eligible exact match keyword that is identical to the query, it will still be preferred over the phrase and broad match keyword.”
Now that broad and phrase match keywords that are identical to a search term also receive priority, according to Google, there is no benefit to using the same keyword in multiple match types as broad match already covers the same queries. However, depending on your structure and setup, this may not apply so test before making any changes.
When a search isn’t identical to any of your keywords. Ad Rank use to determine which keyword was served when multiple keywords matched, but none were identical to the search. Now, in addition to Ad Rank, Google is taking relevance signals into account. Relevance is determined by assessing the meaning of the search term, the meaning of all the keywords in the ad group, and the landing pages within the ad group.
