AMAZON
Amazon will pay up to $1000 if a third-party product causes damage
Great news for consumers, but what about sellers?
Beginning September 1st, Amazon will pay customers up to $1000 if a third-party seller’s product causes property damage or personal injury.
Previously, Amazon redirected customers directly to the seller in the event of a damage claim. Many courts disagreed with this decision, arguing that Amazon should be held liable for faulty products.
What this means for you if you sell on Amazon: If a customer complains about your product causing property damage or personal injury, Amazon will now act as an intermediary between you and the consumer.
Amazon will present the claim to you along with their arguments and evidence.
- If you don’t respond to the claim, Amazon will bear the cost and continue to pursue you.
- If you respond and reject a claim that Amazon believes is valid, the company will still pay the customer.
Here’s where things get interesting: If a claim is up to $1,000 (80% of claims are in this category), Amazon will pay that amount at no cost to you.
What happens if the claim exceeds $1,000 and you reject it while Amazon believes it is valid?
Will they put a hold on your account?
Will they continue to charge you until you pay up?
Your guess is as good as ours.
Google will limit how advertisers can reach minors
Facebook did it 14 days ago, and Google is now following suit.
Advertisers will no longer be able to target people under the age of 18 based on their age, gender, or interests, according to Google’s announcement.
Furthermore, Google will strengthen safeguards to prevent minors from seeing age-sensitive ad categories (whatever that means). This update will be rolled out globally over the next few months.
Ending things on a positive note: Google has also announced improved bidding options for Display & Video 360. This is great if you’re a big spender on the platform.
SPONSORED BY PODIUM
How 100k businesses are organically building SMS lists on autopilot
What would they do with these lists, you wonder? They get reviews, they nurture the relationship with their customers, and they get sales!
Getting your customer’s email address is a win these days – no doubt about it.
But getting their mobile number is just as good, if not better: we are talking about an average 98% open rate for SMS compared to 20% for email.
So, how do you build an SMS list? The efficient way?
When a user goes through your website, you have many opt-in opportunities to get their number but you’re not taking advantage of them, because… Well, you don’t have any system for that. Until now.
Podium can get consent from your website visitors every time the iron is hot.
And that’s just the beginning. After getting consent from your website visitors, Podium helps you start conversations, convert them into customers, and generate reviews.
Podium helps you take care of your customers throughout their journey with your business.
Get their number. Get reviews. Get paid! With Podium!
ADVERTISING
Advertising principles never change… Strategies do
The pandemic changed the way people buy.
New privacy laws and Apple’s iOS14 changed the way data is managed by advertising platforms.
The platforms themselves have changed, as well.
Hence, while principles stay the same, the strategies must (and have) evolved.
If you’re looking to learn these new strategies to power up your PPC campaigns,
Kristen McCormick from WordStream shared 8 of them.
1) Pair broad match with audience targeting to succeed without modified broad: According to Google, broad match can be more effective at driving performance. Yet, it can waste money on low-converting traffic.
By pairing the broad match keyword type with larger affinity, in-market, and custom audiences, you’ll get the benefit of broad matching at a lower risk.
2) Turn YouTube Studio into a video and display ad optimization tool: YouTube Studio is mostly popular among creators. But if you connect it to your ad account, you get access to data and insights you won’t find in standard Google Ads reporting.
With this, you can:
- Plug leaks in ad spend.
- Identify sources outside YouTube. Find out where traffic to your website is coming from, and use those sources to build custom audiences.
- Obtain the Key Moments report. This shows the exact moments in your videos when users engaged or dropped off.
3) Use Microsoft Advertising Intelligence to get new keywords ideas: This is a keyword planner tool you can download using an Excel plugin. The amount of information it provides can look overwhelming at first, but it will allow you to discover keywords that you wouldn’t find with Google’s Search Terms Report.
4) Find out how Display Ads are impacting your overall campaign performance:
- Set up Display campaigns names to include “display” so you can create a Traffic Source Audience.
- Make sure your Traffic Sources are added to Google Ads and Google Analytics. This is necessary for the metrics to appear in the Audience Report.
Now, the number in Google Analytics will show you which users did not convert trhough Display Ads, but eventually returned to your website and converted through other channels.
These are just half of the strategies. Kristen McCormick’s post goes on to tackle other methods including: how to work around the new third-party data rules and refining B2B personas with LinkedIn.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
ANALYTICS: Why is your Google Search Console data different from your Google Analytics data? Here’s the answer, straight from the horse’s mouth.
TIKTOK: After being the most downloaded app from February to July, new stats say that TikTok was the most downloaded app in 2020. We are not surprised.
ADVERTISING: Google needs your opinion on what custom columns should be added to Google Ads.
B2B: Salesforce wants you to become a better B2B marketer. The company will produce original shows for salespeople, marketers, and businesspeople in general.
SEO: It’s not what, it’s who. Google has added new author properties to help you identify who wrote a document.
LINKEDIN: You know video is a serious content format when LinkedIn starts using it. The platform added a native video meeting option.
GOOGLE: Are you real? That’s what Google My Business wants to know, which is why it started requiring some businesses to include a physical address.
BRAIN TEASER
A doctor and a bus driver are both in love with the same woman, an attractive girl named Sarah. The bus driver had to go on a long bus trip that would last a week. Before he left, he gave Sarah seven apples. Why?
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.
Sh*tposting
No, this is not a random, obnoxious word. It’s a new trend that’s happening on Instagram.
What it’s about: Some refer to it as “text memes”. Basically, you use Instagram’s “Create” mode to impose text posts on top of (mostly gradient) backgrounds.
When all is said and done, the end result looks like this. Or this.
Not a joke: Sh*tposting started as a way for Gen Zers to poke fun at the older population’s, sometimes long winded, “inspirational” Facebook posts.
If you’re a millennial (or a New York Times reporter who got excited about discovering the new slang word), this may all seem pretty ridiculous to you.
However, given that the majority of new trends originate with teenagers, we would not dismiss this as just a passing fad.