SOCIAL MEDIA
Snapchat and Twitter want to help you prepare for holiday sales
One of the following three things is true:
Snapchat and Twitter held a costume contest, carved pumpkins, and shared actionable tips that could help you make the most of the holiday season.
Some like it augmented: According to Snapchat’s latest report, their users use augmented reality (AR) to create immersive experiences and do virtual try-ons.
The report claims that Halloween campaigns with Lenses have 66% higher brand awareness, 197% increased ad awareness, and 161% higher shopping intent, and more.
Some like to talk things through: Twitter claims 76% of users agree that conversations on Twitter result in product purchase.
In fact, there were 100M+ more total festive season tweets in 2021 compared to previous years, so the tweet-buzz around holidays is real.
… And it’s already started: Snapchat reports 40% of people start holiday shopping mid-September, with the peak falling in early October.
By the way, that’s also when holiday discussions start trending on Twitter.
Why we care: While we’re all hoping for a profitable Q4, it’s hard to predict what this year’s results will look like.
The better you prepare on each individual advertising channel, the more likely you’ll see wins during this period.
Important updates to Merchant Center, Search Console, and Google Ads
Zip up your G-suit, because we’re taking off.
Your products in every land: Google is removing the “primary country of sale” and “additional countries” from your Merchant Center feed and replacing them with a new “target countries” field.
Yes, it changes how in-feed countries are organized, but it doesn’t change the countries targeted by the existing feed.
And no, you don’t need to change existing feeds or campaigns. Whew.
Google is also adding a “feed label” feature, which will allow you to create custom feeds, target specific countries with your ads, and more.
Hello, HTTPS report: You’ll soon be able to see the HTTPS status of your website in the Search Console.
The report, which should tell you whether your website pages are served as HTTPS—and if not, why not—is being gradually rolled out in the coming weeks.
Finally, Performance Max now has Google Ads script support: Google has launched this as a brand new campaign type in scripts, similar to how shopping and video campaigns work.
You can use the script to pause or enable campaigns, and select and modify most asset groups.
With those updates out of the way, now’s a good time to talk about privacy…
SPONSORED BY SALESFORCE
2,583 marketing decision-makers opened up about their digital-first marketing strategies
Are you banging your head against the whiteboard trying to adapt to the new marketing environment of data protection and user privacy?
You could save time, dollars, and sanity simply by listening to your peers.
Salesforce interviewed 2,583 decision-makers in marketing to understand how they’re handling data, analytics, and privacy in a digital-first era.
And they unearthed several interesting insights:
- What are considered the most important success metrics.
- Where marketers are making technology investments in response to privacy changes.
- Where marketers are spending ad budgets and how they’re tracking data across channels.
- The speed to insight factor that separates high performers from mediocre ones.
You’ll also find data broken down by industries and countries, so you’ll find the insights most relevant to you and your brand.
Download the Marketing Intelligence Report here.
TIKTOK
Want to increase TikTok video views by 30%? Play the right tunes
Tim Duncan recently shared a useful and incredibly simple tip on Twitter for lifting your TikTok views.
He suggests that including trending music in your video content can significantly boost your engagement.
Best part is, it’s insanely easy to find out what’s trending.
TikTok has a built-in trending insights feature that displays the hashtags, songs, creators, and videos that are going viral on the platform.
Here’s how to access it:
- Go to TikTok Ads Creative Center.
- Select the Songs thumbnail.
- Choose the time range. You can choose from yesterday, last month, or the last 120 days.
- Select whether you want to include only new songs on the list.
- Browse the list and take notes.
Boom, you’re ready to add some bangers to your videos. Test them out with your video content or ask your influencers to include them in your requested videos.
Then, analyze the results.
Ah, if only all marketing tips were this simple, right?
SPONSORED BY BLACK CROW AI
Get a list of customers eager to buy from you
Black Friday… Cyber Monday… Christmas…
The biggest shopping holidays of the year are coming fast. How do you know you’re targeting customers who are ready to pounce on your deals?
With Black Crow’s one-click AI model, you can create a tangible list of ready-to-buy prospects for your campaigns.
That way, every ad dollar you spend targets a hungry buyer.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
How to be the Andrew Huberman of your niche
Ever heard of Dr. Andrew Huberman?
He’s a professor of neurobiology at Stanford. He also runs a successful podcast and a Twitter account.
Andrew’s been around for a while now, but he went viral a couple weeks back for a podcast episode where he discussed the dangers of drinking alcohol.
Why’d Andrew go viral? Because he presented a fresh, counter-narrative argument: Not only is alcohol unhealthy, but even what most people consider to be “moderate” drinking causes serious health problems.
There’s a pattern among people like Andrew Huberman, Lex Fridman, Tim Ferriss, and James Clear: They’re all professionals in complex fields who’ve gained broad mainstream appeal.
And they all rely on two principles:
- To hook people, lead with novelty. Most people bury their best insights midway through a Twitter thread or an essay. People like Andrew use their best ideas as their hook. They provide the biggest “wait, what?” moment upfront. And it works.
- To grow an audience, create thoughtful, long-form content, then distribute the highlights. Creating long-form content, like we do for Stacked Marketer Pro, increases your surface area for finding special insights. And distributing those special insights, like in this section of our newsletter, is how you get a larger audience to your long-form product.
Why it matters: Lots of marketers talk about “content,” but few use the two principles above to grow their audience.
These principles are common traits of popular content creators for a reason—they work!
Use them, and you’ll increase your chances of growing a loyal audience… and maybe revenue, too.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
EMAIL MARKETING: Do you want to engage with your email list weekly without having to brainstorm campaign ideas or pay a freelancer? We partnered with Chase Dimond to deliver you three email campaigns every week you can swipe and send to your list to get sales. Check out the preview.*
ADVERTISING: Hope you enjoy the great outdoors… Out-of-home advertising is on track to break its 2019 record by the end of this year. Could be a new channel to consider if you’re looking for options.
APPLE: If there is space, a new ad you should place. That’s what Apple seems to think, anyway. They’re opening two new ad slots in the Apple Store… rumored to be the Today tab and the “You may also like” section.
E-COMMERCE: Take note, Shopify merchants. The popular e-commerce platform is launching a new paid feature called Shopify Markets to help sellers manage “overseas sales and related complexities.” Sounds handy if you’re shipping overseas.
PRIVACY: Ouch. Google is set to pay a fine of 4.1B euros to European Union regulators after losing the legal battle over “bundling Google Search and Chrome with Android.” Will this force Google to open Android to more competition?
BRAIN TEASER
A window cleaner is cleaning a window on the 25th floor of a skyscraper when, suddenly, he slips and falls. He has no safety equipment and nothing to soften his fall, and yet he is not hurt.
How can this be?
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.
The name is maze… corn maze
You can do a lot with corn: grill it, bake it, pop it or crush it into flour…
… Or pay homage to James Bond with it.
Yep, if you fly over Spring Grove Village near Chicago, you’ll see what appears to be a mural of all of the iconic actors who played the world’s most famous spy carved into a 28-acre corn field.
And if you’re nearby, you can find your way out of this iconic maze and have a Vesper Martini.
Sounds like a good road trip idea, no?