Full Transcription
[Introduction] – 0:00
Hey everyone, welcome back to episode 81 of the 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 November 1st, 2021.
[Update 1 – New Tools In Facebook Group] – 0:12
So today, we’re gonna first, start off with Facebook group so Facebook, which is also now known as metal, and this week announced of some features that I believe you want to hear about. So first of all, this was announced in their Facebook Communities Summit, and of the, some of the UI changes such as customizing the colors, post backgrounds, fonts, and you know post format things like that. One of the few of the notable things that you should really hear about are, you know, creating a unique greeting message and share group rules that new Members will automatically receive when they join a group. Members will soon be able to give Community Awards such as like Insightful Post, Uplifting, or Fun. So basically that way you giving the power back to the members in the group in terms of who gets the awards and things like that. So you, as a group owner and our group admin do not have to do a lot of heavy lifting. You can do connecting in real-time by using community chats in Facebook and Messenger as well as create recurring events when group members will get together. So if you have a, let’s say, virtual happy hour, or ask me anything you can create those virtual recurring events in the group. The, as an admin you can pin announcements and choose the order in which the announcements show up. Creating community fundraisers to raise money for group projects, which is great but also the other thing that has been missing in Facebook group for the longest time and which was something of my pet peeve was that now you can actually charge of for the group. So you can offset the cost of running the group by charging people, and this is a feature that I am going to use in my group. You can also sell merchandise. Then you can create a paid subgroup. So for example, you could create a free group and then you can create a subgroup that says for paid members, paid content, and get. I mean you know what? If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know I’ve been complaining about that, and this is something great feature ’cause now it’s not fragmented anyone anymore. Previously we would have to use Patreon and things like that and actually, Twitter did something like this and I’m glad Facebook is picking up on this.
[Update 2 – Instagram Rolls Out “Add Yours” Sticker for Stories] – 2:40
So with that, let’s move on to the next update, which is from Instagram. Instagram is rolling out this thing called. ‘Add your Sticker’ for stories, which is actually they’re copying this from TikTok and TikTok is, have this DUET feature. The purpose of this is for you to tag people in your stories and then you come with people that you tagging could be able to like. Take that and your story and be able to respond to it. So it’s just a good way to banter and create a change so that people stay engaged. I like it, but again, this is something none of you know brand new feature. This is a feature that has existed in Twitter and Facebook is just copying it and bringing it to a calling it and ‘Add yours’
[Update 3 – Instagram Launches Live-Stream Shopping Events for the Holidays Plus More] – 3:30
Next up on Instagram, we have this thing which is Instagram launches like shopping events for the holidays. Well, again, you know we covered Instagram live shopping. Facebook has been testing it out like shopping with something that’s taking off. In China, it has really even done amazing. Some people are estimating that by 2023 it should be able to 400 plus billion dollar industry. Facebook obviously you know it is angling to become an e-commerce platform, I should say take a step back and I should say actually Instagram is angling to become an e-commerce platform and Instagram is pushing that. So where this is all going is, you know Instagram has launched a series of events and not going to basically talk about a whole lot of series. What’s there, what they have, and things like that? But overall, the main takeaway is that you know you can use live shopping for number one. And Instagram is also giving you creating the ‘Gift guides’ for the holiday season, by using price as a category, so you could probably if you have your product on Instagram. You’d be able to. You know, get this product up on the shop tab based on the price range and people, you’ll probably get more visibility on your products and hopefully things like that, right? How Instagram curates these holiday pics. I do not know. Instagram hasn’t shared that, but hey, if you have a chance. If you have a product and it’s already on Instagram, then you have a chance to basically be seen. So I would say, go ahead and do it. The other thing is also Instagram is helping you to maximize your holiday sales by giving 20% used, 20% off to users on their first purchase. So why is Instagram doing that? Instagram is doing that because they want more people to shop through their app because obviously they want to become the go to space, right? They want to kind of take away from shop. Shopify, they want to take it away from Amazon. They want to take it away from, you know, other avenues. eBay, things like that. That’s a great strategy for Instagram and how successful that will be remains to be seen because you know, oh, you can give me 20% off. So obviously so for example, if I was going to buy Under Armour anyway, I will go to Instagram and I’ll probably buy and then offer go to get a $10 off. But next time I wanna buy from Instagram I don’t know. I don’t like that. But I will let the millennials and Gen X or Gen Z’s figure that out.
[Update 4 – Pinterest Introduces Live Shopping Feature] – 6:03
OK with that, the next update is while talking about live shopping, is that Pinterest gets into the live shopping game as well and they’ve done a Pinterest TV where they’re going live every weekday at 6:00 PM. Every Monday at 6:00 PM, and they’re basically focusing again. Different category, recorded users to watch it and be able to shop. There’s nothing new, so I’m not going to dive deeper into it, but I just wanted you to know this. The listeners that you know live shopping is here. Live shopping has lasted for ages on TV. We have this channel called QVC, so it’s just here. It’s going to stay on. And you’re, if you’re marketing, you have a product to sell. Your goal is to figure out how do I create live shopping on my account on my channel. ’cause that’s what the game is. It’s not easy, right? But that’s what you need to do.
[Update 5 – Microsoft Advertising Rolls Out Smart Shopping Campaigns] – 7:03
OK, Next up on Microsoft. Microsoft has rolled out smart shopping campaigns. Now, if you know me, you know I am not a big fan of smart shopping campaigns. Anything like, especially when you have. If you are a small business and your budget is small right? You don’t want to get into any of these smart campaigns with Microsoft saying, Oh well, Microsoft Market is uncertain he. And you know from that we have rolled out smart shopping campaign. That’s no different from Google Smart shopping campaigns. But I will tell you. If you had to choose between running your ads and not running your ads, or running ads and running smart shopping events. I would probably seduce smart shopping campaigns, but with the caveat right that be prepared to spend a lot of money on that if I would definitely encourage you to. Go work with a reputable ads person, whether it’s in Microsoft side, Facebook side, or Google side. And get, spend a little bit more money and get a better return on investment. Other than that, there’s nothing new to talk about. Smart shopping campaigns, the other things Microsoft did is like they added. Automated Universal Tracking set up with Google Tag Manager. They have expanded targeting costs per click, and cost per impression pricing on the Microsoft audience that was also available so you can figure out what kind of campaign you want to do. Those are some of the updates from Microsoft this week.
[Update 6 – “Google My Business” Is Now “Google Business Profile”] – 8:32
And with that. Let’s go into the next update, which is from Google, and in fact the next three updates are four updates are from Google. Number one is that ‘Google My Business’ has changed the name and they have become ‘Google Business Profile’ like Google is changing it and there’s a long history. Google, local, local plus all these things. Google’s finalized this at Google My Business is confusing the returning that sometime in 2022 and now moving everyone into Google Business Profile. So the other few things, notable things you should hear about. You should know about these things like you know now you can claim and verify your business profile directly in Google search or Google Maps. There is something called call history that’s officially launching in US and Canada, so now you can see who are the people who called your business, and then you know messaging can do it can be done directly from your Google search results, so you can actually interact back and forth with the people who are messaging your business, and you can also decide to turn on message read receipts. Overall, these are good stuff, so I would say check out the details in our show notes page and you’ll be glad you did.
[Update 7 – Google Page Experience Algorithm Update Coming to Desktop in February 2022] – 9:49
Next up, these are all on the SEO front. Google has announced that page experience algorithm update is coming to desktop in February 2022. Now we’ve seen this in Google IO that you know. Google says in a mobile page experience update page experience algorithm is important for your website and that was from the mobile side which is basically what Google is saying is Google is saying you know how long does it take your page to render, how long, you know how easy people can enter something in your page, right? First content. (Excuse me) How long does it take for the page to render as well as in how long does it take for someone to actually fill out if there’s a form? How long does it take for someone to be able to put some data in there? Does it have HTTPS security and things like that? Now they’re bringing this over to your desktop, right? So if you have already done optimizations for your mobile, you should be good, but nevertheless it’s still a good time for you to kind of go and check it out. Just ’cause you know. Sometimes a page can render well on mobile, but it may not go into that well on desktop and you don’t want to be hit by Google because you know, Google thought you are not doing well.
[Update 8 – Tag Assistant Conversion Support In Google Ads] – 11:15
So for that let’s move on to the next update, which is Tag Assistant, Tag Assistant Conversion Support in Google Ads. What this is is basically sometimes oftentimes you’re running campaigns and you do not know if your conversions are being measured properly or not, or if you’re missing things out. Or if everything is when was the last time your ping’s conversions happened, so with that. What Google has done is they have created this tool called TAG Assistant Debug mode. I’m putting on putting the link of that tool on our show notes page. So if you’re interested go check it out and I feel like I will be doing a deep dive on this tool sometime this week. But be forewarned, I am traveling this week so it may not happen this week, but I think it requires me to kinda show you the. How it all works and probably this is gonna happen in marketANDgrow channels like Instagram and YouTube. But overall I like this Tag Assistant conversion ’cause it helps small business owners to figure out if my conversions have been tracked. I am I being able to like, you know, firing it. Do we have unverified or inactive conversion actions that we should be looking into? Things like that.
[Update 9 – Conversion Goals Group in Google Ads] – 12:33
With that along the lines of conversion and goals, Google also announce something that is really amazing, which is now you can create group conversion actions into categories based on conversion types and can that can be used to optimize bidding at the account or campaign level. So what is that? Let me explain to you what this is. Give me. So, for example, let’s say you are an online clothing retailer. Going forward, you can set a purchase as your account default goal so that all of your campaigns can optimize for that outcome. Within this purchase goal, you will also be able to define which specific conversion action such as completed sales should be used for bidding. This gives you the flexibility to optimize for what you care about while unlocking new bidding opportunities, right? So what this basically means that you can create a goal at an account level and then you can create sub-goals like you know if you look at how website conversion works right, you create an overarching goal. And then you create, like micro-goals or mini-goals that contribute towards the big goal, right? So this is something you know we’ve been. Marketers have been doing it, but we’ve been doing it manually and doing it and I think Google is making it easier, so I like that. So the other thing you want to you should know is that you will start to see your conversion actions group by these new conversion goals when you create new campaigns over the next few weeks or existing conversions, for conversion optimizations and bidding settings will not be changed. That means there is no action to be taken on your part for now, but obviously going forward you want to take advantage of this new feature so. You know you gotta create new campaigns, things like that and move things around. If you want to jump into that.
[Update 10 – Performance Max Campaigns in Google Ads is Available To All Advertisers] – 14:17
With that, the next update I have is Performance Max Campaigns is coming to Google Ads now. What is Performance Max? Performance Max campaigns are a new way to buy Google ads across YouTube, display search, discovered Gmail and maps from a single campaign. OK, if you are a small business or if you’re spending limited amount of money every day on Google ads, this is not for something for you. Like if you’re spending and Google and I will tell you some of the examples of Google is using for this campaign roll-out, aliens, and all these big companies. They probably spend say upwards of probably $10,000-$15,000 a day, my guess. ’cause these are multi-billion dollar companies and you, as a small business we don’t want to do that. I mean it. Yes it’s this Performance Max Campaign is based, Is backed by artificial intelligence, is machine language, and things like that and in the future it’s going to replace Smart shopping and local campaigns, next year. And when I said in the future, but where you if you have been hearing it, I’m not a big fan of automation at a smaller budget. If you’re spending like, you know, $500 a day even. Let’s not say that. If you’re spending like $50 a day or $100 a day, this is not the way for you to go. Why is that? Well, there isn’t enough data point, right? Artificial Intelligence, machine language only works when there’s a lot of data for it to learn very quickly and kind of decide what’s working and what’s not working. When you have $50 or $200 and $500 a day campaign. You don’t have that many data points. To you and me $100 a day seems like a lot right? Or $500 a day seems like a lot, but trust me, there isn’t enough data points because there are billions of auctions happening at any given minute. So $500 a day will probably get like they just say we participate in 200 auctions. 200 is a lot, maybe 100 auctions. Assuming it’s a $5 per click, there isn’t enough data point for Google to learn quickly and just drags on and it learns the wrong stuff. Things like that. So all in all, performance Max Campaigns are here for large advertisers. For small advertisers, I would still say stay on the manual settings until we figure out what is working. You make a lot of profit and then as you bump up your sales you probably by then also trained Google’s algorithm or artificial intelligence as artificial intelligence on what to build on what your success looks like. You know what your customers look like, and then you’d probably be able to like, really take advantage of this update.
[Closing] – 17:09
With that folks, that’s it for This Week In 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 would find the links to the 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. New Tools In Facebook Group (0:12) – During this week’s Facebook Communities Summit, Facebook introduced new features to help group admins build the community they want, strengthen group culture and manage and sustain their communities. The most notable features are:
- Customizing the colors, post backgrounds, and fonts that display in groups, along with the emojis members can use to react to content.
- Using feature sets to select preset collections of post formats, badges, admin tools, and more that can be turned on for their group with one click, so that communities can engage in the ways they want.
- Suggesting preferred formats for members to use when they post in their group. This will appear in a new posting button that stays with members as they browse the group, eliminating the need to scroll back to the top when they’re ready to post.
- Creating a unique greeting message and sharing group rules that new members will automatically receive when they join a group, so they can develop a sense of belonging sooner.
- Members will also soon be able to give community awards, like Insightful, Uplifting, or Fun, to content that they find valuable.
- Connecting in real-time by using Community Chats in both Facebook and Messenger, as well as creating recurring events when group members want to get together more regularly, either virtually or in person.
- Admins can pin announcements and choose the order in which they show up in a new Featured section at the top of groups, to ensure their community sees the most important details first.
- Creating community fundraisers to raise money for group projects, to offset the costs of running the group, or to enable members to show their appreciation for their admins and moderators.
- Selling merchandise they’ve created through a shop in their group, enabling members to show their support and deepen their sense of community.
- Creating paid subgroups that members can subscribe to for a fee to gain exclusive access to more content, experiences like coaching or networking, or deeper conversations.
2. Instagram Rolls Out “Add Yours” Sticker for Stories (2:40) – Instagram is once again following the lead of TikTok with a new feature and has launched a new ‘Add Yours’ sticker for Stories, which enables users to prompt others to respond to their Stories content, in order to create more engaging reply threads to Stories posts.
When users respond, they’re added to the profile bubble listing on the sticker, which, when tapped, enables users to go through all the other responses to the thread, building a response chain within Stories that can help prompt more engagement.
3. Instagram Launches Live-Stream Shopping Events for the Holidays Plus More (3:30) – Instagram is diving deeper into live-stream commerce with the launch of a new series of shopping-based broadcasts heading into the holidays, which will also incorporate exclusive product launches and influencer recommendations to help maximize interest.
“On Fridays in November, (November 5, 12, 19) lookout for the #BuyBlack Live Shopping series to discover brands from talented Black creators. From December 5 – 15, we’re hosting a Holiday Pop-Up Shop LIVE series. Picture the magic and charm of a holiday market, but from the comfort of your couch.”
Instagram’s also launching new Gift Guides by price category on the Shop tab, which will highlight ideas in variable price ranges (up to $250), while it’ll also share new tips from the Instagram Shop team on key seasonal trends and recommendations. The new features will be accessible by tapping “Holiday Picks” on the Shop tab in the app.
And finally, Instagram’s also looking to help retailers maximize their holiday sales by offering 20% off a users’ first purchase in the app, as well as free shipping on eligible purchases.
4. Pinterest Introduces Live Shopping Feature (6:03) – Carving out its share of the shoppable Livestream market, Pinterest on Friday introduced Pinterest TV, a series of live, shoppable episodes featuring content creators. Each Friday, the social media platform will facilitate exclusive, live product drops from the likes of Allbirds, Crown Affair, and Outdoor Voices.
Starting Monday, Pinterest will release new episodes every weekday at 6 p.m. EDT, with each day focused on a different category, and will record them for users to watch on-demand via iOS and Android. The social network is also setting up a virtual studio where Pinterest producers work with content creators on program development, according to the announcement.
Pinterest TV creators can tag products for viewers to buy, as well as access other tools, including a product drawer with prices and product details, product drops, and brand collaborations, and a module to offer limited-time discounts. They can also show how many items are left during the show, per the announcement.
5. Microsoft Advertising Rolls Out Smart Shopping Campaigns (7:03) – Microsoft Advertising has said they focus on automating the repetitive tasks of search advertising so that marketers can focus on the creative and strategic endeavors and these features and updates enforce that concept.
“In this time of market uncertainties and competition, creating engaging online shopping experiences that can be effectively scaled and optimized is of utmost importance, especially for small business owners,” said Kevin Salat in an announcement today. Smart Shopping campaigns allow advertisers to use Microsoft’s automation tools to optimize their shopping campaigns to target customers who are more likely to convert at higher revenue values. These campaigns are “a combination of traditional shopping campaigns, automated bidding, Universal Event Tracking (UET), and remarketing. With these powerful automation tools enabled for Smart Shopping, you can help serve the right ad to the right user at the right time to boost conversion rates and reduce your costs,” said Salat.
Other big additions for this month are:
- Automated Universal Event Tracking (UET) setup with Google Tag Manager.
- Expanded targeting. The Microsoft Audience Network is expanding its footprint to 18 new markets, available to all customers in mid-November.
- CPC and CPM pricing. On the Microsoft Audience Network, you can now choose between CPC or CPM Pricing, so you can select the right pricing model for each campaign.
6. “Google My Business” Is Now “Google Business Profile” (8:32) – Google is renaming Google My Business to Google Business Profile, as it moves efforts to bring more of the business profile management out of the Google My Business app and directly into Google Search, Google Maps and those respective apps.
Google Business Profile will be the new name going forward for Google My Business. Google said the reason for the new name is to “keep things simple” and sometime in 2022, Google will retire the Google My Business app completely.
Google is encouraging businesses to manage their single listings directly on Google Search or Google Maps, either via the web interface or mobile apps.
If you manage multiple locations for your business and/or you are a local SEO that manages a number of businesses, you will still continue to use an interface like Google My Business, renamed to Business Profile Manager going forward.
Google also announced some new features with this announcement. The new features include:
- Claim and verify your Google Business Profile directly in Google Search and Google Maps
- Call History is officially launching in US and Canada (more details here)
- Messaging can be done directly from Google Search (more details here)
- Message read receipts can be controlled in Google Search and Maps
7. Google Page Experience Algorithm Update Coming to Desktop in February 2022 (9:49) – Google will begin rolling out the page experience ranking update to desktop search results starting in February 2022. Google said the rollout will finish rolling out by the end of March 2022. This update will include all the current signals of the mobile version of the page experience update, outside of the page needing to be mobile-friendly.
Which factors is will be included in this desktop version? Google said all of them with the exception of the mobile-friendliness requirement, which is kind of obvious. So be mindful of LCP, CLS, FID, HTTPS Security, and the Absence of intrusive interstitials
While I do not believe this page experience update will be a significant update where you will see tons of sites see their rankings drastically change, those working towards improving their page experience have been primarily focused on their mobile pages. Now, that you have your mobile pages ready for this update, you can shift focus towards your desktop pages.
8. Tag Assistant Conversion Support In Google Ads (11:15) – Google also introduced Tag Assistant, a tool that can help you diagnose issues with your conversion actions, such as unverified conversion actions, inactive tags, or no recent conversions. Additionally, the Tag Assistant shows which conversion actions are being properly measured in real-time.
The Tag Assistant can help advertisers troubleshoot unverified or inactive conversion actions, which can help them more accurately record conversions.
You can access the Tag Assistant debug mode here.
9. Conversion Goals Group in Google Ads (12:33) – Google Ads is introducing conversion goals, which group conversion actions into categories based on conversion type and can be used to optimize bidding at the account or campaign level, the company announced on November 1.
So now there are three types of conversion goals:
- Standard goals — Conversion actions added by the advertiser, which are then automatically grouped into conversion goals based on their conversion category type (e.g., “Purchases,” “Contacts” or “Submit lead forms”).
- Account-default goals — The standard conversion goals (above) that you have designated as your account default. When you create a new campaign, all account-default goals in your account are selected for optimization by default.
- Custom goals — Goals that advertisers can create and add any combination of primary (used for bidding) and secondary conversion (not used for bidding) actions.
“For example, let’s say you’re an online clothing retailer. Going forward, you can set a purchase as your account-default goal so that all of your campaigns can optimize for that outcome,” Google said in the announcement, “Within this purchase goal, you’ll also be able to define which specific conversion actions, such as ‘completed sale’, should be used for bidding.” Advertisers can decide which individual conversion actions are used for bidding optimization when the goal it belongs to is used for bidding.
Advertisers will begin seeing their conversion actions grouped by these new conversion goals when they create new campaigns over the coming weeks. Existing conversion, conversion optimization, and bidding settings will not be changed.
10. Performance Max Campaigns in Google Ads is Available To All Advertisers (14:17) – Performance Max campaigns are a new way to buy Google ads across YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, and Maps from a single campaign. Per Google, they complement your keyword-based Search campaigns to help you grow performance across Google’s full range of advertising channels and inventory.
Performance Max campaigns rolled out to all advertisers around the world starting November 2nd. They will also become the next generation of Smart Shopping and Local campaigns, which will both upgrade to Performance Max next year.
