MARKETING
The return of the external link
Social media platforms have an old-new friend: External links.
- Instagram recently made its “link sticker” available to everyone, allowing users to link to external websites from their Stories. You’ve most likely seen this sticker a few times by now.
- Clubhouse just revealed that “Pinned Links” were one of its fastest-growing features. There have been 5.5 million clicks to Pinned Links from Clubhouse rooms in less than a month. “Pinned Links” allow you to place an external link at the top of your Clubhouse room.
Why we care: Most of us sell on our own site, so we want more ways to link out from social media platforms. This “external link” social media trend is something we definitely hope to see more of.
E-COMMERCE
Twitter: Here are our trending holiday shopping categories
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are almost here.
One of the questions we always ask is, “What will people buy more of this year than last year?” Twitter has published a blog post with some answers. These are the top holiday shopping categories this year vs. 2020:
- Pets, +29%
- Beauty, +25%
- Athletic apparel, +51%
- Appliances, +64%
- Designer fashion, +119%
Getting ready to shop early: According to a recent Twitter survey, 37% of Twitter users plan to start holiday shopping earlier than last year. All Tweets seem to confirm this sentiment.
The bottom line: If your product is in one of these five categories and your target audience is on Twitter, try advertising earlier using Twitter Ads, for example. You may be pleasantly surprised.
SPONSORED BY VOLUUM
Get lucky this BFCM with Voluum and their hot friends
First time hearing about Voluum? It’s an all-in-one advertising software that lets you track, optimize, and automate all your ad campaigns in one place.
Why do affiliates like it so much? Is it because of their…
- Full API integrations with all popular traffic sources?
- Auto-rules and other automation features?
- Traffic distribution AI for improved campaign performance?
- Or maybe Anti-fraud Kit that easily detects fake clicks or suspicious visits?
Sure, people like all that, but there’s something more… Voluum is fond of partnerships.
And this BFCM they got together with Zeropark, Pushground and Landerbolt to offer you the biggest Black Friday package 😉
Just choose a Voluum plan for you to get:
Superior tracking + $600 worth of traffic + free landing page manager – all that for only $128
Sounds tempting? So waste no time and get it now!
Can you promote a podcast with Facebook Ads?
If you want to boost your podcast listening, this test conducted by Jon Loomer will help you do that.
First of all, you can’t boost a podcast natively. Also, episodes aren’t available as posts in the Ads Manager.
But here’s a loophole: When you re-share a podcast, Facebook gives you the option to re-share with a clip. And when you do it, that post is eligible for promotion.
Although:
- The post isn’t available for Instagram because of the clip’s dimension.
- The post isn’t available for desktop.
This is how Jon Loomer set up the campaign:
- Objective: Reach. The objective and optimization don’t matter much as you can’t optimize for podcast listens.
- Audience: Page followers.
- Placements: Mobile. News Feed and Video Feeds only.
Some errors in the Ads Manager, however, makes you feel skeptical that the campaign will work
But when Jon Loomer checked the preview of the ad from his mobile device, everything was fine.
The results: It seems that Facebook hasn’t yet sorted out how to report metrics for campaigns that promote podcasts:
- The Ads Manager doesn’t report on engagement, reactions, link clicks, or video views. It only reports reach, impressions, and clicks (all).
- Podcast Listens: A podcast post will show how many listens it received. But there’s no track of this number in Insights or the Ads Manager.
Is the ad working? Jon Loomer suspected that Facebook reporting was reliable. So since he hosts the podcast on Libsyn, he looked at the number in the podcast platform to double-check.
And it seems that the ad is driving listens.
Bottom line? You can’t promote a podcast with Facebook Ads, but there’s a loophole.
It can work, but the option comes with some limitations.
You can experiment with the loophole found by Jon Loomer, and see if it works.
Moreover, as Jon Loomer says, this is likely a short-term issue and Facebook will provide more options to promote podcasts.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
Here are 100 pages straight from our deep dives, for free
Over eight months ago, we launched Insights.
On 1st December, we will be publishing our tenth deep dive, and you can get your hands on all of them within your first month. There are over 100 pages straight from these deep dives that you can read for free here.
And for Black Friday, we’re giving you 50% off your first-month subscription with the code BFCM. That means you pay under $5 per deep dive.
Subscribe to Insights using code BFCM. Offer valid until 30th November.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
Two of the strangest (but probably effective) angles we’ve seen
When people talk about the angles and ad types used in most campaigns…The ones we are about to show you aren’t in there.
These ads will seem kinda strange, they won’t really “fit in” with what you’d expect…But they’re probably effective, or they at least got our creative juices flowing.
1. What’s your zodiac sign – by Goli
When we analyzed Goli, a supplements brand, this angle stood out. They created one ad for each zodiac sign to run on Facebook.
Why we like it: Users like personalization. Sure, there’s a stage where it gets creepy but this one is probably walking the line well. They also included traits each zodiac sign is known for in their copy.
2. Cat’s out of the…inbox? – by BOLDKING
We’re subscribed to many newsletters, including e-com brands. This email by BOLDKING, a razors brand, was something one of our Crew members called one of the most creative emails they’ve seen.
Why we like it: Outstanding subject line (looks like a mistake), great follow-up with the cat jokes and image, decent copy, and it can be applied to just about any brand!
Any other strange (but probably effective) ads you’d like to share with us?
If you like what you read, feel free to check us out on Twitter.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
CONTENT: High-quality content, whether that’s for SEO, copywriting, design, or videos, content only gets more and more important. And this Black Friday you can get it all for 26% off from FATJOE…With white label and scalable services! Check it out here.*
E-COMMERCE: Buy-now-pay-later is becoming just buy-now. Klarna now has a “Pay now” option.
SEO: Google’s November 2021 Core Update is already having an impact on roughly half of SEOs.
BUSINESS: Big tech isn’t gonna like this. The EU has passed stricter rules allowing lawmakers to further regulate companies like Facebook and Apple.
MICROSOFT: Page Insights are coming to Bing.
ADVERTISING: The year is 1970, a time when advertisements for cocaine gadgets were commonplace in magazines. What did those ads look like? Here are some retro images.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
Two fathers and two sons went fishing one day. They were there the whole day and only caught 3 fish.
One father said, that is enough for all of us, we will have one each.
How can this be possible?
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.
NASA will practice saving Earth by smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid
This isn’t science fiction.
NASA is set to launch a spacecraft into space. This spacecraft won’t explore space, instead it will destroy a part of it.
But don’t worry, the goal here isn’t destruction, but to save the human race. NASA is trying to see whether crashing into an asteroid will change its course.
The project is called Double Asteroid Redirection Test (or DART for short). This mission is scheduled for Tuesday, and the spacecraft will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket (yup, SpaceX seems to be involved in every cool space project nowadays).
Let’s hope this test is a success and we get a new weapon for space defense.