SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram and TikTok are the most engaging platforms
Quick, pretend to be shocked.
According to Sensor Tower, Instagram and TikTok are the leading social media platforms when it comes to usage and engagement.
Keeping smartphones warm: Instagram sees the highest daily engagement rate, with 39% of app installs being “power users,” or people who engage with the app every day.
TikTok is close behind, with 29% power users in 2022.
Now flip the screen: While Instagram has the most engaged users, TikTok wins out in the “time spent on the app” category.
TikTok users are spending 1.5 hours on the app daily on average, nearly twice as much time compared to Facebook and Instagram. Whoa.
Why we care: Engagement can be an indicator of good click-through rate (CTR) and overall ad exposure.
It can also help you make better advertising decisions. For example, if users are spending so much time on TikTok, it means they’ll see the same ads more often.
So it’s likely that you’ll need to manage frequency capping much more on TikTok to avoid ad fatigue.
And speaking of ads…
ADVERTISING
Are you spending enough money on your marketing channels?
… because there’s a good chance you aren’t.
According to a recent Nielsen study, about 50% of digital marketers aren’t investing enough ad spend in a single advertising channel to see results.
You get what you put in: The report suggests that testing multiple channels with small amounts doesn’t bring enough results to be accurate.
It also claims that by “cracking” the ideal budget for every channel, marketers could raise return on investment (ROI) by 50%.
What you can do: Move more money to the top and bottom of your marketing funnel on a few channels, instead of slicing your budget across every channel.
… And mind the age gap: When increasing budgets, focus especially on demographic targeting, because according to Nielsen, 37% of ads are off target for gender and age in the US.
Age isn’t everything, but it matters.
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MARKETING
How to map out your marketing career using a skill matrix
At some point in your career, you’ve probably wondered:
- When should I ask for a raise?
- Which skills do I need to learn next?
- Am I capable of moving up the ladder?
Marketing isn’t as defined as some careers, so figuring out your next steps can feel overwhelming.
Here’s the good news: Tom Critchlow charted out a useful skills maturity matrix that shows how you can progress in your career by working on particular skills.
Now, Tom focuses on the career path of an SEO expert, but you can apply the matrix to any position in the digital marketing industry.
Tom argues there are two skill types essential for any marketing expert:
- Hard skills. This is in-depth knowledge of the industry: Technical expertise, out-of-the-box thinking, industry knowledge, and so on.
- Soft skills. Or, as we like to call them, people skills. You know, like communication, management, and leadership.
Be soft, my friends: While mastering hard skills can get you high paying individual contributor positions, you won’t reach the highest paying jobs without honing your soft skills.
… Not because hard skills ain’t useful. Hard skills can help you springboard to better things.
But the thing is, as you progress, the most valuable skills become things like managing bigger clients or teams, or navigating and growing departments and entire organizations.
So if you want to take your career to the next level, take a quick look at Tom’s matrix to see how you can start building the skills you need to make a career jump.
Good luck!
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No visibility. Less content consumption. Lost sales.
That’s what happens when you don’t optimize your website for user experience metrics…
The metrics better known as the three Core Web Vitals that Google is encouraging web owners to optimize for.
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THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
To make more sales, rethink holidays
Are you thinking about holidays the wrong way?
Here’s our favorite definition of a holiday: It’s a recurring day that prompts people to change their behavior from the norm. That’s all.
Let’s talk statistics: We polled more than 400 marketers to find out which holidays drive the most sales. Here are the top 10:
- Black Friday.
- Cyber Monday.
- Christmas.
- Mother’s Day.
- Memorial Day.
- New Year.
- Valentine’s Day.
- Halloween.
- Fourth of July.
- Labor Day.
What these holidays have in common: They’re fairly well-known among the general population, even if some are only in the United States.
In other words, the majority of the population does something “out of the ordinary” on those days… giving you an excuse to make an “out of the ordinary” offer.
From that list of 10, how many holidays are you creating special offers for? Half, maybe?
Now consider that back-to-school purchases encompass more spending than almost all the holidays above, combined.
The Crew’s insight: Don’t just run offers on Christmas and Black Friday.
Scan your calendar for every possible day that your customers might be acting out of the ordinary, and test an offer for it.
We wrote more on how to properly take advantage of this in our latest Deep Dive on holiday marketing. You can read the preview here.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
EMAIL MARKETING: How to resuscitate “dead” email subscribers and bring them back into the purchase funnel. Inbox Mailers enables you to do this. They leverage a unique engagement trigger system that we have seen more than doubles open rates. See how to revive your inactive subscribers now.*
PRIVACY: Whoops… TikTok’s attempt to run “personalized ads” based on legitimate interest doesn’t comply with EU privacy laws, says Italy’s data protection watchdog. Looks like TikTok will have to gain users’ consent before running personalized ads. Also…
TIKTOK: Yes, influencers are supposed to disclose paid partnerships, but when they don’t… nothing happens. Keep that in mind when you’re analyzing trending content on TikTok.
E-COMMERCE: Pop the champagne. E-commerce sales in the US are expected to surpass $1 trillion this year, three years earlier than initially expected. Woohoo!
GOOGLE: Talk about “dark web.” Google removed language claiming “hidden query data is extremely rare” from their official docs. Maybe the claims that you don’t see 50% of queries on Search Console reports are true, after all.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
My life can be measured in hours,
I serve by being devoured.
Thin, I am quick.
Fat, I am slow.
Wind is my foe.
What am I?
You can find the answer here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Pringles spider
Here’s one way to know if you’re a marketer:
You think everything can be a brand or marketing channel… including bugs.
That’s what the Pringles team thinks, apparently. They’re planning to rename a spider because it looks like their logo.
And the brand hack doesn’t stop at names…
Customers can adopt a Pringles spider, too.
They’re strangely cute, so maybe you could adopt a spider and name it, too.
Just don’t eat it by mistake.