SOCIAL MEDIA
Is this the future of social media?
Forget gazing into crystal balls, just watch what the kids are doing.
According to Pew Research, teenagers are moving away from Facebook and Twitter to YouTube and… Want to take a guess?
Yes, it’s TikTok. While YouTube is still the undisputed king with 95% of teenagers using it, TikTok continues to escalate in popularity.
67% of American teenagers aged 13–17 use it frequently, with 16% saying they’re on it almost constantly.
Snapchat and Instagram are also popular, with six out of ten teenagers using both.
These platforms… Not so much: In 2015, 71% of teenagers used Facebook. Today the number is 32%. Twitter is farther behind with just 23% of teen users. Tumblr has just 5%.
Why we care: Facebook won’t dominate the social advertising space forever, so if you’re targeting a younger audience, plan and diversify your marketing efforts accordingly.
On the bright side, Facebook is still immensely popular among older users, who also happen to have more money to spend, so maybe don’t ditch those ad campaigns just yet.
SEARCH
Microsoft and Google are fine-tuning search
… And it’s almost like they don’t want customers to leave.
Tell us more: Bing is adding annotations to shopping results that will show users additional information about selected products, including:
- Potential online coupons you can automatically apply.
- Pricing history, for transparency about the current product value.
- Informing you whether or not a brand is following ethical principles.
The feature is currently available across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, and France.
That’s sticky: Meanwhile, Google added several updates designed to make users reluctant to leave the search results page. Like these, for example:
- Higher quality snippets: Google is using machine learning to understand the “general consensus” about the topic and provide more accurate answers.
- Information literacy: Improvements to Fact Check Explorer and Reverse image search should make it easier for users to validate information.
- An expanded About this result: Users will now get even more context for your website, including online reviews, entity owners, how widely a source is circulated, and so on.
Why we care: Search is evolving heavily to improve the customer experience and reduce needless click-throughs. It’s also becoming increasingly shopping friendly.
So optimize your web content accordingly, and do your best to stay in Google’s and Bing’s graces.
Because who wants to add them to your competition, right?
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MARKETING
5 ways to test your Google Shopping ads and increase ROI
How do you know if you’re squeezing the maximum potential out of your Google Ads?
The answer starts with the letters “AB” and ends with the word “testing.”
Now, the Google Ads split test feature is only available for Search and Display campaigns…
But if you’re willing to think outside the box, WordStream offers 5 creative ways to test multiple variations of Shopping ads.
Let’s split…
Option 1: Test product feed attributes. Titles, images, or extensions are attributes you can optimize for best results.
Decide what you’ll test and then create equal groups of products using one of two methods:
- Cluster analysis method. Split the ads based on historical performance. For example, by clicks, costs, or conversion value.
- Random split method. If you use numerical product IDs, you can split them by odd or even numbers. Once you make the split, make changes to product IDs in your test groups and look for best results.
Option 2: Test campaign settings. For things like return on ad spend (ROAS) or different campaign types, you’ll need to split something other than IDs. Here are three different splits you can try:
Customer Match split method. You can make a cookie split in your customer relationship management (CRM) software to target two different sets of first-party audiences.
By doing this, you create two different campaigns with two Customer Match audiences that you can analyze. Also, by splitting cookies, you can actually get a random split. Nice.
Geo test split method. This one’s easy and reliable. Split your campaigns into smaller geographical regions, or geos. Each geo goes into either group A or group B.
Use one group for testing, and one to serve control campaigns. It’s easy to monitor, as long as you remember that advertising swimming gear in Alaska differs from advertising it in Florida.
Campaign split method. Divide your campaigns into two similar groups with equal metrics.
Use one group to make changes and the other for your current best practices. Monitor changes in the “test” group and note the difference in performance.
Yes, it’s a bit technical, so we recommend reading the whole article. It’s an outside of the box method that may help you understand your campaigns better…
And maybe get you a few new customers.
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THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
One-and-done solution to reach the inbox more often and fight spoofing
It’s Q3, which means you’re probably planning ways to build your email lists for Q4 and beyond. Awesome.
But building an email list is one thing. Actually landing in the inbox? That’s a whole ‘nother ball game.
One of the struggles we see constantly is email marketers investing in awesome campaigns… only to end up in spam or the Promotions tab in Gmail.
Why? Because most email marketers don’t authenticate their domains.
What is domain authentication? It’s a way to provide verifiable information about the origin of the message. In other words, it proves the domain owner sent the email, and not someone else.
Why is it useful? Two reasons:
- It bumps up your deliverability. Most inbox providers prefer authenticated emails, so your chances of avoiding the spam folder increase significantly. It can also help you reach the Primary tab in Gmail—but doesn’t guarantee it.
- It protects you against malicious emailers. When authenticating your domain, you can tell the receiving server to reject unauthenticated emails. This way, nobody can spoof your domain.
How do you authenticate a domain? There are four things you need to be fully authenticated: DKIM, SPF, DMARC and BIMI.
- First, you should set up DKIM. It’s probably the easiest.
- SPF is next because you also need it for DMARC right after.
- Third on the list is DMARC with a “reject” or “quarantine” policy, because that’s needed for BIMI.
- Finally, set up BIMI to finish authenticating your domain. Top it off with a nice profile picture in some inboxes so you can stand out in the crowd of emails.
… And just like that, your chances of landing in the inbox increase dramatically.
By the way, if you want more, we wrote an entire guide to email deliverability. It’s worth reading in full… if we do say so ourselves.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
GOOGLE: Head’s up if you’re targeting countries—there’s been an API change. The current “sales_country” field for Shopping and Performance Max campaigns will be replaced by a more generic “feed_label” that can accept any string. Rollout will be complete by the end of September.
GOOGLE: … And while we’re on the topic, the “targetCountry” and “country” fields are getting cut from the Content API for Shopping. Google recommends updating the code to support the “feedLabel” field so it doesn’t impact or break your API integration.
TWITTER: Whoa, that’s cool. It seems Twitter is testing featuring multiple media—videos, gifs, images—in a single tweet. We can’t wait to see the creative possibilities this feature can bring.
BRAIN TEASER
When I am metal or wood, I bring you home. When I am flesh and blood, in the darkness I roam.
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.
Classic novels, but without childcare
Imagine the first lines of your favorite classic novel, but with a slight twist…
Would the Invisible Man wish he were invisible to a certain little one for a peaceful minute?
Would Ishmael from Moby-Dick really want to be called… or would he prefer a brief, if distracted, FaceTime?
All we know is, without childcare, Anna Karennina would probably be over in three pages…