ADVERTISING
The Google Tag Manager feature that bypasses ad blockers
When we see the Hacker News community commenting on a marketing technique from over a year ago, we take notice.
“Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon”, is the title of a blog post that was posted on November 15, 2020 and went viral on Hacker News yesterday.
What’s the post about: More and more marketers are using the server-side tagging version of Google’s Tag Manager. Why? Several reasons.
One is that with the server-side version, trackers are no longer called from the user’s browser. The result is a better user experience than client-side loading, which can load hundreds of scripts at once.
The primary reason many marketers use server-side tagging is because it bypasses most ad blockers. This is still true today.
This struck a chord and sparked a huge discussion on HackerNews about how to create better ad blockers that will block server-side tagging, which is difficult to achieve.
Until that happens on a mass scale, the fact remains: Server-side tagging with Google Tag Manager is getting more popular by the day among marketers.
MICROSOFT
Microsoft Advertising gets auto-apply recommendations
If you have 15 useful recommendations for your ad campaign, it can be time-consuming to select each one and click “apply” on each one. Multiply that by 20 ad campaigns and you kinda give up.
Microsoft appears to have recognized this frustration and, as a result, has just rolled out auto-apply recommendations.
Attention control freaks: Microsoft will, by default, opt-in advertisers for auto-apply recommendations.
Advertisers will receive an email about this and unless they explicitly opt out, recommendations will be auto-enabled within 7 days. Which might not be such a bad thing if we’re to believe Microsoft’s claim that their recommendations really improve ROI.
SPONSORED BY TRENDS
How this profitable wellness app got 300k users with Reddit marketing
“Should I try Facebook Ads or Google Ads? Is SEO worth it? Should I produce content in-house or hire a freelancer?”
Testing new business or marketing ideas always comes with its risks. What if you could use winning strategies from other entrepreneurs?
Like the one shared by James Saady to grow his app, Bearable, to 300k users.
He is a member of Trends, a digital tribe of 15,000+ ambitious and successful individuals, sharing business, marketing and growth strategies. And help each other dominate their own markets.
Back in 2019, James Saady started Bearable as a personal wellness app. From zero and completely bootstrapped.
After six months, the app had 100k users. Today, the app counts 300k users.
It was all done with Reddit marketing. No ads, no press, no influencers. Just pure Reddit hustle.
Tap into some of the best and brightest minds in business, like James Saady, when you join the Trends community. Try it today for just $1 and get ready for your next big idea.
META ADS
How to unlock secret Facebook Interests
Did you know that Facebook has been intentionally holding out Interests from us?
They did it with a good intention though.
When you type a keyword in the Interest search bar, to make the interface more user-friendly, the platform will only return a limited list of related Interests.
But in reality, there are more Interests than the ones shown in that dashboard you’re all too familiar with. These are untapped audiences that your competitors can’t see – unless they read Stacked Marketer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Justin Briones shared a process to unlock them. And no, you don’t have to scrape them manually.
You’ll do it through the Facebook Marketing API. This is the data you see on the Facebook Ads Manager interface, but raw and without restrictions.
The Ads Manager tends to restrict some data to make it more user-friendly. The Marketing API doesn’t. And that’s how you unlock the hidden Interests.
So, first of all, create a Facebook for Developers account, then add your app, product and get an access token. It’s a few steps that Justin Briones outlined quite clearly.
Once you get the access token, there are 4 more technical steps to follow, and again, it’s simpler if you just follow the ones outlined in the blog post.
And don’t worry, you don’t need to do any complicated coding to get access to this. Justin’s guide really goes step by step so that almost anyone can do it.
SPONSORED BY GRAZE
Mow Money – A lucrative investment opportunity.
Landscaping companies are plagued by high labor costs and turnover.
But Graze, a fully autonomous commercial lawn mower, has the answer. Their 100% electric mowers eliminate 50% of labor costs and 75% of fuel costs associated with traditional lawn mowing, increasing margins up to 40%!
Graze already has $32M in pre-orders from some of the world’s largest landscaping companies and is set to disrupt this $100B industry.
And guess what? You have a chance to invest in it!
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
Does your lead gen landing page make one of these killer mistakes?
We’ve tested plenty of landing pages ourselves (not just for our newsletter). We’ve analyzed others. We’ve promoted countless landing pages within our newsletter from a wide variety of sponsors. Here are 3 things you must implement, unless you want to kill your conversions.
We’ve ordered them from most important (and most common, actually), to least important.
1. Have *all* your form fields above the fold for mobile
OK, we understand for certain leads it’s not possible but you should really try. In some cases, this goes as high as doubling the conversion rate from 25% to 50%.
If you need more info than you could fit above the fold, consider making it a 2-step form, where you first get the vital information (and the lead), then get more details later.
2. Your headline should be the strongest value proposition
All too often we see products use their lead magnet name as a headline. That’s most likely a waste for the most visible text on the page.
Replace generic headlines with clear value propositions and watch those conversions go up and up.
3. Make your text readable.
Stop making your text size 9 on landing pages. Lead magnets are most often an impulse.
Use bigger text, make sure it’s easy to read on mobile devices. And, if it doesn’t fit in a tweet, it’s probably too long to be in one text block on your landing page.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
SMS MARKETING: Learn how to increase your LTV, ROI and brand loyalty using SMS marketing. This free guide will show you the A to Z of this channel. Cut the learning curve and start making sales with SMS quickly. Read The Complete Guide to SMS Marketing here.*
GOOGLE: Don’t worry, standard Shopping campaigns aren’t going away in the foreseeable future, according to Google’s Ads Liaison.
ADVERTISING: Have you had poor results with advertising on smaller search engines via Google & Microsoft Ads? The reason for this could hide in this looming antitrust lawsuit. Worth a read if you run search ads!
SOCIAL MEDIA: Boom or bust? Donald Trump has launched his own social network on the App Store. It was the top iOS app yesterday in the US but users had trouble registering.
APPLE: Five in five. No, we’re not talking about Norway’s gold medals at the Winter Olympics. Five fines in five weeks for Apple from the “Dutch watchdog” as their saga rages on.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
What 8 letter word can have a letter taken away and it still makes a word. Take another letter away and it still makes a word. Keep on doing that until you have one letter left. What is the word?
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.
There’s a new breed of investors on TikTok
If the title of this post made you a little uneasy, you’re not the only one. 179,000 people agree with you.
Investing advice on TikTok can range from amusing to cringe-worthy. This Twitter account shares the “best of the best”, highlighting investment advice that will make you anything but wealthy. Here are some of the nuggets that gave us a good laugh:
- Buying a real estate for half the price using crypto.
- Being stubborn and refusing to pay your student loans because, well, banks are naive. Who in their right mind would lend $20k to an 18-year-old?
- How to use the “cigarette butts” style of investing (apparently Warren Buffet had something to do with it).
And of course, this whole thing wouldn’t be complete without a song about Dogecoin.