MICROSOFT
Microsoft launches professional service ads
Remember when Microsoft launched credit card and health insurance ads formats? Now the company has launched a new ad format known as “Professional Service Ads.” Think ads for realtors, financial advisors, insurance agents, and so on.
Where they’ll appear: On the right rail of Bing search engine results, alongside text ads.
Are they effective? Yes. According to Microsoft, when compared to regular text ads, professional service ads convert 60% better and result in a 67% decrease in cost per acquisition (CPA).
Availability: U.S. and Canada only for now.
ADVERTISING
All major advertising platforms have pulled out of Russia
The great pause continues.
Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Google, Microsoft, Snapchat, Twitter. All these platforms have suspended advertising in Russia in the last few days.
And on Sunday, TikTok hit pause on live streaming and new video uploads to the country.
So if you’re using TikTok Ads Manager, you may notice a red box indicating that advertising in Russia has been suspended.
In addition, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has suspended IAB licenses in Russia and Belarus.
SPONSORED BY #PAID
TikTok influencer marketing mystery: Why are businesses doing it all wrong?
Here’s the wrong way most companies are running TikTok influencer campaigns:
- They spend hours searching through TikTok to find creators.
- They jump between seventeen tabs to list them, reach out to them, analyze their performance, and so on.
- They waste more time negotiating deals with them, sometimes bad ones.
- They’re left in the dark when it comes to the performance achieved by the creators.
It’s a true mystery why businesses do this when they could just use #paid and have everything handled in a matter of minutes. And within a single platform!
- #paid’s algorithm matches you with the right creators according to your product and goals.
- You can reach out to them and negotiate through #paid.
- #paid handles the rates, and all of the legal and admin work.
- #paid even shows you the performance stats of your campaign.
- Hit launch and watch.
Make #paid your secret sauce to a positive ROAS.
CONTENT MARKETING
How to inject drama and credibility into your articles
Leverage U-turns.
That’s Sean D’Souza’s short and sweet piece of advice so your articles don’t feel like a one-sided conversation.
What’s a U-turn?
When we write an article, we tend to focus on getting our point across. But most readers never accept information without questioning it.
When you research a product, you always have objections. When you’re faced with an idea, there’s no reason why you should accept it without having some sort of objection.
That’s why you can use U-turns: You can bring up objections the reader might have for them, proving that you’ve covered both sides of the facts.
This makes your argument more believable. It’s a simple piece of advice, but one that can make your content feel more valuable.
There is one downside to U-turns: When you use them excessively, you can end up confusing the reader. You still need to balance your main argument and the counterargument.
And you have to make sure you tie every U-turn to your original point.
SPONSORED BY GASMOBI
Cash in with these branded white hat lead gen offers
Gasmobi is an affiliate network with a simple mission: Provide the best connection between ambitious publishers and top offers.
Insurance, loans, CPF, education, home improvement, and finance are their main verticals.
They have direct brand advertisers in LATAM in white hat leadgen, and exclusive CPL offers for Europe, which allows them to be flexible and adjustable for any publishers’ needs.
Access these easy-to-sell offers.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
On Twitter, avoid advertising with your brand account
Twitter is a people platform. Sure, there’s a niche where social media managers go wild in an endless feedback loop of engagement (see: any fast food brand’s Twitter page), but people like reading tweets from…well, people.
The same is true, mostly, in advertising.*
Think about it. You’re there, behind your old desk, scrolling Twitter for the 50th time that day before you’re finally going to get to work, and you see an ad.
Are you more likely to click on that ad if it’s from a real person, or a brand with some mainstream SaaS-looking logo? The answer is probably the former.
Just like how you prefer reading tweets from real people, you’ll prefer clicking on ads from real people.
That’s the insight: Use your founder’s account, not your brand account, when you advertise. You’ll find that the CPC is consistently lower.
*Exceptions (because there are always exceptions). Don’t use your founder’s account:
- If your founder really, really doesn’t want to be on Twitter
- If your brand is very well-known
- If your founder uses their Twitter for personal things that could reflect poorly on the brand (well, that’s a problem in general)
- If the purpose of your campaign is to drive brand awareness
- If the purpose of your campaign is to grow a following on your brand Twitter account
That’s it. Now, go drive some conversions.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
GOOGLE: “Filter by smaller stores” just became more widely available on Google Shopping. Could this give mom-and-pop shops an advantage?
SOCIAL MEDIA: Social media users aren’t just users…they’re shoppers, too. According to a report, over 65% of people use social media for shopping inspiration. Advertise accordingly.
LINKEDIN: How can you recharge your marketing in 2022? LinkedIn’s latest magazine issue has a few ideas…
TWITTER: Marketers, take note! Twitter identified the hottest discussion topics happening on their platform. And there’s a good chance these topics could guide your Twitter strategy.
STARTUPS: We all dream of that exponential growth, right? Jason Cohen, a successful startup founder and investor, thinks it’s a myth. Here’s why.
BRAIN TEASER
Bruce is standing behind Tony and Tony is standing behind Bruce. How is this possible?
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.
Nobody cares about the metaverse or NFTs anymore
The metaverse and NFTs might be nothing more than another case of “shiny object syndrome.”
Searches for keywords like “metaverse” and “nft” have decreased significantly since the beginning of 2022, reaching their lowest point in March.
That’s a sharp drop from the middle of 2021, when searches for both keywords were at all-time highs and everyone thought they’d be the next big thing.
Onto the next shiny new thing, we suppose…