SOCIAL MEDIA
Snap and Twitter aren’t meeting expectations
More people doesn’t always mean more money.
Snap increased daily users but lost dollars, despite getting 3M more users compared to last year.
They attribute the “slowing demand for their ad platform” to inflation.
… and Twitter is short on both, reaching just 237.8M active users compared to the expected 238M, and earning $1.18B instead of $1.32B.
Why we care: It’s good to check on the health of your marketing channels now and then. Knowing their status can help you make better advertising decisions.
For example, Snap’s dropping ad spend and increasing daily user count could mean an opportunity to reach more users at a lower cost.
Meanwhile, if you’re not seeing desirable results on Twitter anyway, now might be a good time to allocate your marketing budget to a more lucrative channel.
BUSINESS
Fake reviews are becoming a real problem
Don’t believe all the hype.
According to a recent study by NBER Summer Institute, fake online reviews cost shoppers 12 cents per every dollar they spend.
Well that’s misleading: People who read artificially inflated reviews are 7–12% more likely to buy an inferior or overpriced product.
That’s a big problem for e-commerce platforms like Amazon, where 42% of reviews during the 2020 holiday season were fake.
Not putting up with it: Amazon, for example, is taking down Facebook groups offering fake reviews.
Meanwhile, Google is testing a new label in Google Search and Maps to warn users when “reviews aren’t verified.”
Why we care: It’s becoming more and more important to solicit customer reviews… the right way.
Because with Amazon and Google cracking down, it’s probably only a matter of time before other platforms do the same.
Besides, brand trust is literally currency. Why risk it?
SPONSORED BY AIR
Your marketing and creative teams aren’t doing their best work
Talent only takes you so far.
Because when it’s time to approve and edit images for that big ad campaign… Or to share design files with team members and clients…
Many marketing teams grind to a halt.
Marketers and designers waste hours searching cloud storage for a file because no one remembers the name.
Approval takes forever because everyone’s emailing their edit requests or asking for access.
Air is the platform that takes your creative teams’ workflow to the next level.
Air helps your team quickly:
- Locate assets with intuitive visual search—no need to remember locations or file names.
- Share files safely using links to single assets or entire boards. You can even set passwords and expiration dates.
- Make edits and changes with its built-in collaboration tools.
- Approve projects by centralizing the creative process.
Marketing teams at Candid, Glamsquad, Google, NBA, and The Dodo use Air to do their best work.
SEO
Find hidden mentions—and build fresh backlinks—with this simple Google search
Knowing how to use Google’s search bar is an underrated skill.
For example, did you know there’s a simple query that displays mentions of your brand that aren’t hyperlinked?
You know what that means… Free backlinks!
As Deepak Ness explains on Twitter, all you have to do is type this in the search bar:
Intext:“[your brand name]” -[your website], -facebook[dot]com -twitter[dot]com
This pulls a list of the websites that mention your business but don’t link to it.
So let’s say your brand name is… Your Brand, and you have a yourbrand dot com website.
Here’s what you’d type:
Intext:”Your Brand” -yourbrand[dot]com, -facebook, -twitter
The Intext pulls mentions of your brand name, while “- yourbrand[dot]com,” “-facebook,” and “-twitter” exclude any shares of your website URL and any Facebook or Twitter mentions.
“Why exclude Facebook and Twitter?” Well, since most of your mentions are coming from your own website and social media… It makes sense to exclude those so you get cleaner search results.
“What other websites should I omit from the results?” That’s entirely up to you. You can exclude LinkedIn, Pinterest, and any other social media site you think relevant.
Okay, now, it’s outreach time! After you’ve identified the sites that mention you without linking to you, you can start contacting the website owners and asking them for a link to your website.
More often than not, you’ll get a positive response. Linking back to a mentioned website is a common courtesy.
And if not… There’s never shame in asking!
SPONSORED BY WORDAGENTS
Scale your SEO-content production without compromising quality
WordAgents helps content-based businesses like e-commerce companies and agencies get search-optimized blog posts, articles, web pages, and more.
Every piece is written by North American writers… Delivered within seven days… And high-quality.
For as little as $0.06 per word.
And right now, WordAgents is offering Stacked Marketer’s readers a 92% discount! Or, if you book a call with their customer success manager, you get 20% off any other package.
Get content that ranks – for a low, low price.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
A simple framework for reverse-engineering your competitors’ ads
You’ve heard the rule of thumb…
If your competitor has been running the same ad for a long time, it’s probably working.
And you or your team are probably tempted to steal their ideas for your own ads.
But instead of creating your own version of a competitor’s ad, why not try some good ol’ reverse-engineering?
Use this simple process to get more insights—and better ideas—out of your competitor’s advertising…
Step 1: Choose an ad. We’ll go with this ad by Athletic Greens:
- Ad text copy: Got 60 seconds? One daily scoop of AG1 is the fastest—and easiest—way to give your body the high-quality nutrition it needs.
Step 2: Break down value propositions and objections. Most ad copy focuses on two things—value propositions and objection-handling.
Let’s apply that framework to this Athletic Greens ad:
- Value prop = It’s really easy.
- Value prop = It’s incredibly nutritious.
- Objection (effort) = It only takes 60 seconds.
OK, so we have a list of the value props and the objection the ad resolves.
Based on these things, we can argue that Athletic Greens thinks both nutritional value and ease of use are two of its best selling points, and that effort is one of their customers’ key objections.
Repeat these two steps for 10+ other competitor ads until you recognize patterns.
Step 3: Rework your own ads. Now that we’ve got a clear understanding of the objections and value props our competition is successfully using, we can find areas they’re overlooking and objections they haven’t addressed.
And just like that… you can end up with better copy, without copying the competition. Nice, right?
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
E-COMMERCE: Struggling to get organic traffic to your store? Inside Stacked Marketer Pro, you’ll discover proven methods like the simple SEO strategy Pete & Pedro uses to drive $50k worth of organic clicks every month. Join Stacked Marketer Pro to level up your marketing.*
ANALYTICS: Filtered reports are coming to Google Analytics 4. Now you can segment your data into multiple reports, for example, by showing Mobile only, SEO only, and more. Sounds good to us!
LINKEDIN: You can toss the PDFs. LinkedIn is finally making carousel posts image and video friendly. The feature will be accessible to select creators first before rolling out the feature to everyone in the fall.
PRIVACY: Can’t stop, won’t stop. Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom are reintroducing persistent tracking to work around recent privacy regulations. Our takeaway? Companies may continue tracking users, but marketers should probably develop strategies that work regardless of data tracking availability. Just saying.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
I am six letters. When you take one away I am twelve.
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.
The 85% learning rule
As a marketer, you’re learning new skills and tech all the time.
So how do you sharpen your skills while keeping your day job… and your sanity?
It’s a learning method that gives you the freedom to fail 15–20% of the time, while getting things right 80% of the time.
In other words, it helps you:
- Fail just the right amount of times to keep challenging yourself.
- Succeed just the right amount of times to stay motivated.
We’re looking forward to trying out this rule ourselves. Will let you know how it goes!