Google brings the week to a close with a bang
The company just finished their Google Marketing Livestream, where they announced a slew of updates for both Google Ads and e-commerce.
Here are some of our favorite Google Ads updates:
- Custom audiences are rolling out to nearly all advertisers.
- Discovery ads and video action campaigns get “Target ROAS” as a bid strategy.
- Image and dynamic extensions are out of beta and available worldwide.
And, of course, our favorite e-commerce updates:
- Last week, Google announced its integration with Shopify. They’re now expanding this integration to WooCommerce, Square and GoDaddy
- The search company is testing a new option where advertisers can connect their product feeds to Discovery ads. Preliminary results are showing these types of campaigns getting 60% more conversions.
- Merchant Center will get new “deal optimization” reporting, allowing you to make your deals more visible on Google’s platform.
FOMO: If you want to check out and learn about all of the updates, there is one sure-fire way to do it: Watch Google’s entire 83-minute live stream on YouTube.
TIKTOK
Tik with the Tokers
The kiddo of social networks shared a massive guide of tips, strategies and inspiration to help small businesses. And here are some interesting insights we found in it:
- TikTok recently hit 100 million active monthly users in Europe.
- 57% of respondents have been inspired to purchase something through the app.
- 67% of TikTokers are older than 25. It’s not only youngsters using this TikTok thing: It’s their aunts and uncles and grandparents and (maybe) great grandparents, too.
The Crew’s take: If you’ve been reading our May issues, you’ll know three things about TikTok:
- It’s on fire.
- They’re putting more focus on e-commerce.
- Some have criticized TikTok’s targeting, but the company is on their heels to change that.
We’re rooting for any new player who wants to challenge the Facebook and Google advertising duopoly – more options for marketers is a good thing.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
This company sold $8M worth of simulated chicken in 2020
How does a vegan brand capture a meat-eating audience? They do what SIMULATE, aka NUGGS, does and never mention they are “vegan”.
We went in with the idea that we’ll be analysing a food brand but what we discovered was a playbook for how to treat your brand as a media company.
SIMULATE could sell anything, it just so happens they sell “simulated chicken” products. How?
- Their Facebook Ads game is absolutely on point. Literally made us want to eat some chicken nuggets after writing that section!
- Memeing on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
- A hidden product-launch email sequence that did $75k in revenue.
There’s more you can catch in the free preview here.
With an Insights subscription, you will get access to:
- Snow, Morning Brew and Peel deep dives. In total, there are over 300 pages of insights on marketing strategy and tactics from three very successful companies.
- The new deep dive on SIMULATE (aka, NUGGS) on 1st June 2021.
- Recorded and new live sessions with marketing experts.
- Much more already within Insights.
Try it out risk-free for $99/month. If it’s not for you, just message us within 24 hours of your sign up and we’ll refund you.
CONTENT MARKETING
5 lessons learned from creating top-notch content for advanced marketers
CXL is an established blog in the online marketing space, especially among advanced folks. And it’s because they’ve made a name for themselves by creating high-quality content.
In his last week as CXL content lead, Bud Hennekes shared five lessons he learned while creating content for CXL.
Here you go.
1) Don’t shy away from hard work: With many marketers going for the quick hack, going the extra mile will pay off big time.
Write content that is both SEO optimized and consumable by humans. Write in-depth and actionable content with an ambitious posting cadence. Focus on creating new posts, but don’t forget to update old ones.
2) Stick to your plan: CXL built a trusted and recognized brand by creating long-form, actionable content tailored for intermediate and advanced marketers.
Although they did not always see the immediate benefits of this approach, they trusted the process. And it’s been well worth it in the long run.
3) Updating content still has a massive ROI, but many marketers still put this task last on their lists: The smart move here is understanding which posts will benefit the most from an update, and prioritize them.
4) Don’t create bland me-too fluff: Rearranging content from the top blog posts in the SERP won’t cut it. If you don’t know much about the subject you’re writing about, reach out to experts, and ask them to share their knowledge. When you can’t create, curate!
5) Make time to learn and recharge: There’s a limit to how much creativity we have. You can still publish high-quality work at a high cadence, it will be very difficult to remain at your best without taking a step back from time to time. Learning new things will strengthen your creativity muscle. Bud Hennekes dedicates two hours per week to learn new things.
As Bud concludes, producing content may be an emotional roller coaster, but you will be rewarded in the end!
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
TWITTER: Live audio is coming to a desktop near you. Twitter has announced that Spaces are coming on mobile and desktop web.
INSTAGRAM: Is anyone actually winning those big Instagram influencer giveaways? Vox does an investigation.
FACEBOOK: We love creative inspiration. This post feeds our addiction with 90 examples of real Facebook ad creatives.
GOOGLE: This is a handy, open source tool to identify trending keywords from a seed list.
ADVERTISING: Poor Google FLoC. Joomla and Drupal are the latest on the list to ditch it.
BRAIN TEASER
When you spell your name backwards, what do you get?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
6 percent of Americans think they could win a fight against a grizzly bear
Which animals could you beat in a fight?
YouGov, a reputable market research firm, took on the insurmountably important task of surveying people from the United States about which animals they think they could beat in a fight.
Here are the top 3 animals in the list, by percentage:
- Rat: 72
- House cat: 69
- Goose: 61
And then things get weird:
- Crocodile: 9
- Gorilla: 8
- Elephant: 8
- Lion: 8
- Grizzly bear: 6
The 6 percent grizzly bear statistic captures all the headlines. But perhaps more terrifying is the fact that nearly 1 in 3 Americans don’t believe they could win a fight against a rat.
To be fair, the rules aren’t specified, and rats are deceptively agile, but… It’s worrying. In any case, we’ve got a recommendation for YouGov: Next time, do an alcohol test of the respondents before starting the survey.