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  • Google Ad Manager Is Back Up After an Outage

    Google Ad Manager Is Back Up After an Outage

    Google had a major outage with its Google Ad Manager late Thursday evening, before fixing it more than two hours later.

    Google posted the following message on its Google Ads Status Dashboard a little after 8:00 pm Eastern Time:

    We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Ad Manager. We will provide more information shortly. The affected users are able to access Google Ad Manager, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.

    Ad Manager is not delivering ads for the affected users.

    A little more than two hours later, the company posted the following:

    The problem with Google Ad Manager has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.

    Ad serving has now been restored for the affected users.

  • A Guide to YouTube Advertising

    A Guide to YouTube Advertising

    YouTube is a compelling opportunity for businesses in their digital marketing and advertising strategies. One of the reasons advertising on YouTube can be advantageous is because it’s the second-most popular website in the world, with two billion visitors a month.

    YouTube is owned by Google, so when you advertise on the video-based search engine, you’re working in the Google Ads network.

    The following is a guide to advertising on YouTube and the basics of what you need to know to get started.

    Types of Ads

    There are a few main types of YouTube ads that are available. These include:

    In-Stream, Skippable Ads

    These ads are what you see playing before a video or during it, which is technically pre-roll or mid-roll. The key feature of in-stream, skippable ads is that a viewer can opt to skip them after the initial five seconds.

    If you’re the advertiser, you pay when viewers choose to keep watching past the first five seconds. Your ad has to be at least 12 seconds long, and you pay once someone watches the first 30 seconds or the whole thing. You’ll also pay if they interact with your ad via a click—it’s whichever comes first that advertisers pay for.

    Non-Skippable Ads That Are In-Stream

    Around 76% of people on YouTube report automatically skipping ads. This leads advertisers to run ads pre-roll or mid-roll with no skip button. If you want a lift in brand awareness and you think your creative will hold the attention of your audience for a full 15 seconds, you might use these ads.

    With non-skippable ads, the advertiser pays per impression.

    There’s also a sub-category of these non-skippable ads—bumper ads. These are six seconds long, and they’re the same as the non-skippable in-stream ad in that you pay for impressions. They’re best for awareness and reach campaigns.

    Discovery Ads

    In-stream ads are like commercials on traditional TV, but discovery ads are more like what you see when you’re using Google to search for something.

    A discovery ad will show up with organic search results.

    A discovery ad includes three text lines and a thumbnail. When someone clicks on your ad, they’re directed to your YouTube channel or video page.

    Non-Video Ads

    If you don’t have the budget for video, YouTube also offers non-video ads.

    There are display ads that will show up on the right sidebar, and they include text and an image, as well as a link to your website and a CTA.

    In-video overlay ads are something that will show up as floating on top of video content from channels that are monetized.

    Creating a Campaign

    If you want to advertise on YouTube, the first thing you need to do is log into your Google Ads account and choose New Campaign.

    From there, you can choose your campaign goal, such as website traffic, leads, sales, or brand awareness and reach.

    You then choose your campaign type.

    Once you’ve chosen your type, you can choose your bid strategy, which will primarily be driven by your campaign type, and you’ll enter your budget. You can set up your budget by day, or you can do it as the total you’ll spend on the campaigns.

    Targeting Your Audience

    You’ll need buyer personas to target your audience, so if you haven’t already created them, it’s a good idea to do so.

    Demographics include things like household income, parental status, age, and gender. YouTube also goes more in-depth, so you can target groups like students, new parents, or new homeowners, just as a few examples.

    Interests are how you can target people based on their previous behavior.

    You can also use remarketing, so you’re targeting audiences that have already had an interaction with your business on your website, with your other videos, or using your app.

    Ad Specs

    If you’re using skippable or non-skippable stream video ads, then you have to upload them as a regular YouTube video first. The ad technical specs, like your dimensions and ad image sizes, should be the same as they would be for any other YouTube video.

    The exception to this is with Discovery ads. These have to be a maximum file size of 1 GB. Discovery ads need to have an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 4:3, but YouTube can automatically adapt the file.

    The minimum length for skippable ads is 12 seconds. The maximum length for skippable ads is three minutes, and for YouTube kids, the limit is 60 seconds.

    Non-skippable ads can’t be more than 15 seconds long, and bumper ads have to be no more than six seconds long.

    The Pros of YouTube Advertising

    YouTube advertising is cost-effective. You can choose exactly what you’re willing to pay, and you’re only paying when someone takes a certain action that you determine.

    An upside of YouTube ads is also that it’s very targeted. You can get extremely detailed as you’re targeting the audience you want to reach.

    People tend to feel more connected to brands after watching a video. There’s the chance to better understand the company and see how a service or product works, and there are faces that can represent the brand in a video ad. You can also be the face of your brand, so you’re able to foster a strong connection with your audience.

    The YouTube ad metrics are easy to measure, and you’ll have access to a lot of insight as far as what works and what you could improve.

    The results can occur quickly since there are billions of monthly users. You’re simply getting your ads in front of a potentially huge pool of people, boosting your clicks, traffic, and sales.

    Video has a powerful emotional impact, making it one of the most effective approaches to advertising.

    The Downsides of YouTube Advertising

    As with anything, YouTube advertising does have a few downsides that marketers need to think about and consider too.

    People don’t love ads in their videos. While they might end up watching some of them if they get their attention, overall, they feel they’re intrusive.  If someone feels like your ad is intrusive and not offering them value, it might evoke negative emotions.

    You’re also still going to need an advertising budget, and you may not be able to afford much here, depending on what yours is.

    Best Practices

    If you think YouTube advertising could be right for your brand, there are certain things you should do when creating your ads.

    ·   Create an ad that’s immediately going to hook people. Maybe you choose a good song for the background, or you immediately work to evoke strong emotion.

    ·   Branding should ideally occur in your first five seconds and also throughout your ad if you’re working at the top of the funnel. If you’re creating ads for audiences that are further down your funnel, then you might be able to add branding later in your video, and that’ll increase your watch times while viewers are engaging with the story of your ad.

    ·   You want to have a story for your ad because this is how you’re going to be able to get an emotional response.

    ·   Make sure people know what step you want them to take next with your ad. You need a goal to measure how successful your ads are.

    ·   Answer a few questions when you’re creating an ad. Think about who the people you’re targeting are, what video content they already engage with online, and what aspects of that can be used and integrated with your own brand story.

    ·   Consider the context where your ad is going to appear. To understand this, get familiar with the type of video content your targeted audience is already engaging with and consuming.

    ·   One interesting way you can target your audience is to show your ad to people who have already searched for terms relevant to your business.

    ·   Use cards to encourage people to buy. A YouTube card is something that a viewer can click to expand. You can make the appearance of a card timed so that the users who are engaged with the video are the ones who will see it. You can feature products in the video using cards to drive purchases.

    ·   Use an end screen that drives subscribers to wherever you want them to go. For example, maybe you encourage them to subscribe to your channel to get future updates.

    ·   Use negative remarketing. For example, if you want to show an ad that’s only going to be for new users, you can exclude people who have previously interacted with you in some way.

    ·   Use closed captioning and, if relevant, transcriptions in other languages.

    Overall, YouTube is a powerful place to run your brand ads. Your paid advertising can work hand-in-hand with your organic social media strategy on YouTube. You do have to remember that these ads can get expensive and complex if you’re not working in a targeted way. You want to know your audience and let the preferences of the people you’re targeting guide the creative process to create your ads for YouTube.

  • Amazon’s Advertising Unit the Latest to Suffer a Headcount Freeze

    Amazon’s Advertising Unit the Latest to Suffer a Headcount Freeze

    Amazon’s advertising unit is freezing its headcount as the company deals with economic headwinds impacting the industry.

    Amazon delivered weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter guidance, an indication the company is struggling with the economic uncertainties and challenges facing the tech industry at large.

    According to Bloomberg, by way of Business Insider, Amazon will continue to fill existing roles but will not create any new jobs within the advertising unit. Amazon did not confirm the news, only telling Bloomberg there were a “significant number of open roles” available.

    “We have many different businesses at various stages of evolution, and we expect to keep adjusting our hiring strategies in each of these businesses at various junctures,” the spokesperson added.

    The move to freeze advertising headcount is especially significant since the unit is one of the company’s fastest-growing divisions and is in third place behind Google and Meta. The measure is evidence of the steps Amazon’s execs are willing to take in order to cut costs and increase profitability.

  • Microsoft Advertising Adds Target Impression Share Automated Bids

    Microsoft Advertising Adds Target Impression Share Automated Bids

    Microsoft has released its August product updates, including Target Impression Share automated bidding.

    Manually managing a search campaign can be a tedious process, especially when trying to stay at the top of the results. Microsoft’s August update aims to help address that with Target Impression Share automated bidding.

    “A new addition to our suite of automated bidding strategiesOpens in new window is the exciting new Target Impression Share strategy, now available in Microsoft Advertising online and Editor,” writes Kevin Salat, Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft Advertising. “With this strategy, you set your budget, where you want your ads to appear, and your Target Impression Share, and Microsoft Advertising automatically sets your bids.”

    Microsoft is a distant second to Google in search market share. Nonetheless, rolling out features that continue to make it easier for customers to use its services can only help it gain ground.

  • 7 Top Ways To Create A Great Customer Experience Strategy

    7 Top Ways To Create A Great Customer Experience Strategy

    The importance of customer experience can be realized with the fact that brands are willing to spend nearly $641 billion on customer experience-enabling technology in 2022.

    Companies are now selling a brilliant customer experience to beat out the competition and develop their revenue growth instead of relying on unique selling points or brand strength as their competitive advantage.

    And there is a good reason for it. Bad customer experience is causing loss of 9.5% revenue to companies.

    On the other hand, consumers are 3.5 times more likely to purchase more from companies offering high-quality customer experience (CX).

    Indeed, a good CX is the foundation of a successful business but how to achieve it for your business? 

    In this article, you will learn about the top seven strategies to create a great customer experience.

    Let’s start!

    1- Define Goals and Objectives

    Before designing your customer experience strategy, first, define your core business objectives that show the actual purpose of your CX strategy.

    Ask yourself, do want to:

    ● Attract new customers?

    ● Retain existing customers?

    ● Embark into a new market or industry?

    ● Enhance your brand visibility in the market?

    Besides, also set other targets, such as the timeline required to implement the strategy, your budget, and other required resources.

    Answering the above set of questions will help you figure out the right strategy that works best for your business.

    2- Map Out Your Target Customer Personas

    Developing detailed customer personas will help you know the types of journeys that B2B and B2C customers wish to take while shopping. 

    Personas will guide companies to build a CX strategy that works for every customer. As a result, they will be able to match up customers to their preferred journeys. 

    To create a precise customer journey map, start with gathering insights into your target audience and existing customers. 

    For example:

    ●  Collect their demographic details, like age, gender, location, etc. 

    ●  Find out their professional background 

    ●  Find out the income group they belong to

    ●  Explore the audience’s interests, etc.

    Besides, closely observe your existing customer base. Analyze the entire details of your existing customers including their purchase records that you have to understand their requirements.

    3- Organize and Consolidate Support Requests

    Opening up more channels for support, such as emails, live chats, social channels, and phones are vital for a good CX service. However, managing different channels is a big challenge. Failing to respond to the customers’ issues drives their dissatisfaction, causing damage to the brand’s image. 

    Hence, the use of a help desk ticketing system is highly suggested. It is a software designed to organize, prioritize, and consolidate support requests from different sources. 

    Using the help desk ticketing system, organizations can quickly assign inquiries to the most relevant agent, provide context to customer interactions, and track customer inquiries. 

    It also has a shared inbox, through which all support staff members can coordinate among themselves and resolve the customer issues quickly and smoothly.

    4- Listen To Your Customers

    A successful organization always has a process in place to listen to their customer, also known as the ‘voice of customer’ (VOC).

    Resolving customer issues only when they directly approach you is not sufficient to improve CX. You need to understand their actual experience when they are doing business with your company. In other words, you should conceive your consumer’s problems as information to create a CX strategy.

    A great way to understand customers’ experience with the brand is to use a VOC platform. The platform gathers data from the customer service department, customers’ social media profiles, dedicated groups, customer surveys, and other outward-facing sources.

    The data collected from different sources will give clarity about what drives customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. It will also suggest to companies the ways to solve the customer problems, instead of simply responding to the query or the issue.

    5- Build Emotional connection

    Customers are 3 times more likely to purchase and recommend your product or service if they have an emotional connection with your brand. 

    Forging emotion in the relation to customers fosters retention and loyalty. Therefore, brands thrive the most that develop emotional connections with their customers.

    The best way to do this is to personalize your communication while connecting with your customers. Here communication entails every possible means, such as email, chat, or phone.

    Here are some of the most effective ways to personalize communication:

    ● Introduce yourself to your customer by your name.                 

    ● Address customers by their name.

    ● Talk with a personal and human touch.

    ● Respond in the form of a new question, advice, or confirmation.

    ● Send personalized birthday emails.

    ● Show a friendly attitude.

    6- Train Your Customer Care team

    By now you know your customers’ perceptions about the quality of your service. Plus, you have already defined the customer experience principles you need to execute. 

    The next step is to use a quality framework to improve the customer care service. A quality framework includes identifying the training requirements of each individual member of your customer support team.

    It also involves the assessment of the quality of phone and email communication based on basic and predefined customer experience principles.

    The advanced level of quality framework incorporates scheduling and tracking your team’s improvement through eLearning, coaching, and group training.

    7- Calculate the ROI of CX

    Quantifying the value of your CX is essential to know if the efforts and the investment put in your team, process, and technology are giving results and paying off.

    However, measuring CX is one of the biggest challenges organizations face mostly because of conflicting information and difficulty in providing a clear CX forecast, articulated in numbers.

    Yet companies look for the most feasible solution to measure the ROI from delivering a great customer experience. The most accepted solution is the formula for calculating the ROI of CX that goes like this:

    Customer experience ROI = Return / Investment

    In some cases, the formula is broken down into smaller elements for more clarity, such as:

    Customer experience ROI % = (Benefits – Investments) / Investments x 100

    Summary

    Improving customer experience involves everything from the level of service to how well products fit into consumers’ lives.

    Happy customers are more likely to recommend to others and help grow your business.

    Hence, if you aim to achieve success as a brand, it is time to focus more on learning from your failures, create strategy-based CX principles, and leverage technology-driven solutions to build deeper connections and relationships with your customers.

  • Reasons Small Businesses Shouldn’t Ignore Digital Marketing

    Reasons Small Businesses Shouldn’t Ignore Digital Marketing

    Most small businesses focus on getting their first customers when starting out. As such, most rely on traditional marketing methods, such as coupon mailers, outdoor advertising, and print ads, to reach out to the local audience. While these marketing methods can work for brick-and-mortar businesses, they are ineffective for businesses that need a global audience.

    Fortunately, digitization has made it possible for small businesses to reach out to prospects online in the global marketplace. Businesses shouldn’t overlook the importance of digital marketing, regardless of their size. Besides learning various effective digital marketing methods, small businesses should keep tabs on digital marketing trends to remain competitive. Below are a few reasons small businesses shouldn’t overlook digital marketing strategies.

    1.  Target Online Customers

    Unlike before, modern shoppers begin their search for brands, products, and services online. In the current digital age, prospects expect businesses to have a strong social media presence and a website. There’s a lot that potential customers look for before reaching out to brands for business. For instance, parents might want to know how to transfer a car title from parent to child before buying car insurance.

    Small businesses should leverage this opportunity to reach such customers. Your website should be mobile responsive, reflect your brand image, and have solid reviews. Most online customers start by reading reviews to learn what other customers say about your business. For instance, 87% of online customers check online reviews before reaching out to local businesses.

    2.  Learn What Your Competitors are Doing

    Small businesses should pay attention to their competitors for business success. Digital marketing methods can help businesses monitor and learn from their competitors. For instance, regardless of your niche, if your competitors have a better-performing web presence, you can begin by evaluating their content strategy. Do they use blogs or visual content?

    Conducting thorough competitor research is the best way to learn about your competitors. Identify their preferred platforms, focus keywords, influencers, and other important pointers. Excellent tools for competitor research include:

    • Ahrefs – Best for discovering competitor’s linked content
    • SEMrush – Best for finding ranking keywords
    • BuzzSumo – Used to track performing content types
    • Moz – Keyword ranking platform
    • Google Alerts – Used to track competitor mentions

    You should also explore other consumer insights tools to boost your content marketing strategy.

    3.  Improve Accessibility to Customers

    You should strive to position your small business in front of potential customers, which is majorly the online space. As mentioned, modern customers start searching for products online. Businesses without an online presence miss many opportunities and cannot compete equally, especially if competitors have a strong online presence.

    Small businesses should leverage digital marketing to position their brands in front of prospects. Besides creating a strong website, digital marketers should learn search engine optimization to outrank competitors on Google searches. Keywords (both long and short tail) are important, and you should understand how to use them to rank your website.

    An online presence creates an environment where customers can reach out day and night. Prospects and customers can send emails, schedule appointments, and purchase products or services anytime. You can also visit WebmastersHall to learn more about improving your digital marketing efforts for enhanced accessibility to customers.

    Endnote

    Digital marketing is beneficial to small businesses in many ways. Unlike other marketing strategies, digital marketing is affordable, making it suitable for small businesses with limited marketing budgets. Businesses that haven’t ventured into the digital space miss a lot of customers and business opportunities.

  • Hotel Marketers Are Turning to TikTok…and You Should Too

    Hotel Marketers Are Turning to TikTok…and You Should Too

    Hotel marketers are increasingly turning to TikTok in an effort to attract guests, setting an example others should follow.

    TikTok has revolutionized the social media industry with its short-form videos. Countless influencers’ careers have started on TikTok, with short-form videos that have gone viral. Hotels are now using short-form videos to show off their properties, attract guests, and tap into people’s desire for something unique.

    “TikTok is no longer considered a dance-trend app for teenagers,” Richard Hyde, managing director of Small Luxury Hotels, told Skift. “The platform is rapidly aging up. We’ve seen engagement from users of all ages on our Small Luxury Hotels of the World account.”

    “Authenticity is quickly becoming the new cultural currency,” he said, speaking of the popular “behind the scenes” approach. “Our hotels are experiential, entertaining, spontaneous, enriching, and fun – like Tik Tok. The platform doesn’t require polished content. Users will sniff out professionally made videos and they won’t perform as well. Our TikTok strategy is based on showing our beautiful hotels from a guest’s perspective.”

    As Skift points out, TikTok is an especially valuable resource for hotels and companies with limited marketing budgets. Savvy marketers can tap into existing trends and then tie in their products or services, thereby benefiting from the wealth of user-generated content.

    For example, the report highlights The Retreat Elcot Park in the English countryside, which tapped into the popularity of Netflix’s Bridgerton.

    “With the Bridgerton tag trending on TikTok, we entered that cultural conversation in an authentic way,” Hyde said. “Using a soundbite from the new series, we framed the hotel as a place that Bridgerton fans must visit.”

    “The TikTok reached an audience of 50,000 — 86 percent of whom discovered the video via the ‘For You Page’, meaning they were not following us yet,” Hyde added. “The comments were filled with friends tagging each other saying that they must visit the property.”

    “As well as discoverability, ‘saves’ are an important metric for us,” Hyde explained. “Users are now saving the destinations they would like to visit in the future.”

    TikTok has clearly evolved far beyond its roots and is now playing a major role in many companies marketing campaigns. With a little effort and even less budget, your company could benefit from this phenomenon and reap the rewards of engaging with user-created content.

  • Google May Be On the Hook for €25 Billion in UK and EU Cases

    Google May Be On the Hook for €25 Billion in UK and EU Cases

    Google is facing its biggest potential fines yet, with the UK and EU pursuing cases that could see the search giant on the hook for €25 billion.

    Google is the dominant online ad platform, but critics have long accused the company of abusing its position in the market and shutting out smaller rivals. Despite the company being fined billions in the past, regulators recognize those fines have done little to alter Google’s practices.

    “The fines we have seen so far from competition authorities have had absolutely no consequence whatsoever,” Johnny Ryan, from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, told the BBC.

    The company is now facing legal pressure on two fronts, with potentially staggering consequences.

    “Google is under pressure on two big issues – one is anti-trust and the other is data protection,” Ryan said.

    One of the cases in question is being pursued in the Netherlands, with the other being pursued in the UK. Together, the two cases could result in €25 billion in fines.

    “Publishers, including local and national news media, who play a vital role in our society, have long been harmed by Google’s anti-competitive conduct,” said Damien Geradin, of the Belgian law firm Geradin Partners.

    “It is time that Google owns up to its responsibilities and pays back the damages it has caused to this important industry.

    “That is why today we are announcing these actions across two jurisdictions to obtain compensation for EU and UK publishers.”

  • Microsoft Multi-Platform Will Make Ad Campaigns Easier

    Microsoft Multi-Platform Will Make Ad Campaigns Easier

    Microsoft has announced Multi-platform, a new way for people to manage multi-platform Smart Campaign ad initiatives.

    One of the biggest challenges SMBs face is managing marketing and ad campaigns across the many different platforms available. Microsoft is trying to address this with “Multi-platform, an all-in-one Microsoft Advertising feature now available in Smart Campaigns.” The new feature will help SMBs manage their campaigns across the leading ad platforms and social media networks.

    “Extend your reach at scale by running ads across any mix of Microsoft Advertising, Google, Facebook, and Instagram—all from one interface within the Microsoft Advertising platform,” writes Kenneth Andrew, VP, Global Small Medium and Channel Partner, Microsoft Advertising. “Not only do we provide a single place for the management and analytics of your campaigns across platforms, but we also bring the power of Microsoft AI, which automatically optimizes your budget for the best performance across all these platforms.

    “Smart Campaigns and Multi-platform can also help with your website or organic social media efforts,” Andrew continues. “Build a brand-new website from scratch or generate one from your business’s Facebook page in seconds. And use our powerful social media management tools to schedule posts and respond to your customers across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram from a single interface. The best part? These tools are free to use—you only pay for your ad spend!”

    SMBs interested in taking advantage of Microsoft Multi-platform can find out more information here.

  • Meta Will Charge Metaverse Content Creators a Nearly 50% Commission

    Meta Will Charge Metaverse Content Creators a Nearly 50% Commission

    Apple make receive the lion’s share of flak for charing a 30% commission for its App Store, but Meta is set to dwarf that for metaverse content creators.

    CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post that the company was looking at ways to help content creators monetize their involvement in the metaverse.

    We’re testing two new ways for creators to make money building for Horizon in the metaverse. First is in-world purchases, so creators can sell virtual items in their worlds and offer paid access to parts of the world. Second is a creator bonus program, where creators are paid for building worlds people want to explore. We’re starting these programs small and will scale over time. Here’s a video in Horizon with some creators discussing these tools and what the metaverse economy might look like.

    Unfortunately for content creators, according to Reuters, Meta plans on taking a hefty 47.5% commission. The company will charge a “30% hardware platform fee,” as well as “a further 17.5% cut as its Horizon platform fees.”

    With those hefty fees, it’s unclear how many content creators will be onboard with Meta’s plans.

  • Google’s Planned Search Changes Could Upend the Internet

    Google’s Planned Search Changes Could Upend the Internet

    Google is preparing a major update to its search engine that will significantly change how websites are ranked.

    Google is trying to improve the quality of search results and reduce the number of misleading sites, misinformation, and clickbait users are subjected to. In a blog post, Danny Sullivan, Public Liason for Search, said the company wants “more content by people, for people.”

    According to Sullivan, in the coming weeks, the company will decrease and deprioritize low-quality results:

    We know people don’t find content helpful if it seems like it was designed to attract clicks rather than inform readers. So starting next week for English users globally, we’re rolling out a series of improvements to Search to make it easier for people to find helpful content made by, and for, people. This ranking work joins a similar effort related to ranking better quality product review content over the past year, which will also receive an update. Together, these launches are part of a broader, ongoing effort to reduce low-quality content and make it easier to find content that feels authentic and useful in Search.

    As part of the change, the company will roll out its “helpful content update” to identify content that is primarily written to rank well in search engines and lower its rank. Sullivan says the update seems to especially benefit searches related to tech, online education, shopping, arts, and entertainment.

    The company is also working to improve access to high-quality reviews, ones that provide helpful, in-depth information.

    Overall the update seems poised to be one of the biggest in some time and will address one of the worst aspects of online search.

  • Google Brings Back Validate Fix Button in Search Console

    Google Brings Back Validate Fix Button in Search Console

    Google has brought back the validate fix button in its Google Search Console after it disabled it earlier this month for upgrades.

    Google disabled the validate fix feature earlier in August in order to add in item classification features. According to Search Engine Land, the search giant has brought back the feature alongside its new additions:

    Now when you go into Google Search Console and click on some of the coverage reports, the “validate fix” button should be back. Google disabled it while upgrading the classification system. There was a notice that read “Limited functionality: We are making some minor updates in the next few days. During this period you will not be able to issue new validation requests.” That notice has been removed and you now have the validate fix feature back.

    While some may prefer the older validate fix, the newer classification feature provides similar information in a simpler, more streamlined manner. Google described the benefits in their initial blog post detailing the change:

    We are grouping the top-level item (a rich result for the rich result reports, a page or URL for the other reports) into two groups: pages or items with critical issues are labeled something like invalid; pages or items without critical issues are labeled something like valid. We think this new grouping will make it easier to see quickly which issues affect your site’s appearance on Google, in order to help you prioritize your fixes. Read more about how this change will affect each of the reports in the Help Center.

  • Lyft Media Launches to Help Brands Engage With Travelers

    Lyft Media Launches to Help Brands Engage With Travelers

    Lyft — the popular ride-sharing service — has launched Lyft Media, a media and advertising platform.

    Lyft is one of the leading ride-sharing services and sees an opportunity to expand its own advertising business and help partner brands reach more consumers. As the pandemic wanes, people are traveling more, opening the door to increased opportunity.

    “Our vision is to build the world’s largest transportation media network, delivering value to advertisers while also elevating the platform experience for riders and drivers,” reads the company’s blog. “Over the past two years, we’ve been growing our media business and are excited to share more details about our products, new partnerships, and future plans.”

    The company’s plan revolve around four advertising channels: Lyft Halo, Lyft Tablet, Lyft Bikes, and Lyft Skins.

    Lyft Halo

    Lyft Halo consists of rooftop-mounted screens that can display digital advertising. The concept is built around Lyft’s 2019 acquisition of Halo Cars.

    Rather than generalized ads, Lyft Halo will display ads specifically tuned to the time of day and vehicle’s location, maximizing possible engagement. Brands will be able to track the performance of their ads, thanks to Lyfts attribution partners.

    Lyft Tablets

    Lyft Tablets are in-vehicle tablets that provide passengers with a way to monitor the progress of their journey, control the vehicle’s music, pay and tip the driver, and engage with partner branding.

    In the company’s pilot program, “1 in 4 engaged with the tablet during their ride, and 98% rated the experience as positive or neutral. And for drivers, tips increased by an average of 28% per ride while using the tablet in Q4 2021.”

    Lyft Bikes

    Lyft Bikes provide an easy way for customers to rent a bike rather than a traditional vehicle. Lyft is installing display panels at the bike stations, providing partners yet another way to engage with consumers.

    The company already has 3,000 stations, 45,000 bikes, and serves 36 million rides annually, providing a significant opportunity to advertisers.

    Lyft Skins

    Lyft Skins provides a way for brands to interact with consumers via the Lyft App itself. DoorDash, Starbucks, HBO Max, Marriott, and Google are just a few of the brands that have already benefited from this channel, and the company is bringing more companies and brands onboard.

    Lyft is clearly looking to capitalize on its position in the ride-sharing market to become a digital platform that provides value to consumers and brands alike.

  • Is TikTok Replacing Google?

    Is TikTok Replacing Google?

    Digital marketing entrepreneur Eric Siu, asks an interesting question, “Is TikTok the NEW Google?” The idea is that younger people are starting to search immersive social apps like TikTok and Instagram directly instead of searching Google.

    “Is TikTok going to replace Google? 40% of 18-24-year-olds report that they are using apps like TikTok to search for things like lunch. The engagement on Google Maps is also starting to grow down. In addition, people are now using fewer keywords to discover. They prefer immersive experiences instead.”

    “Now, things are changing quite a bit because Google is actually starting to index Instagram posts and TikTok posts. If you use Google as much as I do for my business or you do any search marketing at all, stay tuned.”

  • ‘LinkedIn’ Search Interest Skyrockets 172% in the Last Decade

    ‘LinkedIn’ Search Interest Skyrockets 172% in the Last Decade

    Interest in LinkedIn has skyrocketed over the last decade, with searches for the networking platform increasing by more than 172%.

    The latest data comes from StockApps, which analyzed search traffic for LinkedIn from 2010 to 2022. The company found that, as of May 2022, LinkedIn was bringing in nearly 1.5 billion unique global visitors, as opposed to 1.3 billion in November 2021. What’s more, searches for “LinkedIn” have increased more than 172% in the last ten years.

    “LinkedIn has become a staple for anyone who wants to build their brand,” writes StockApps Financial analyst Edith Reads. “That reality is evident in the growing interest by professionals seeking to share skills and opportunities. In addition, its Google search interest has grown to 79 from 29 ten years ago, underscoring the platform’s growing significance in connecting people.”

    StockApps data confirms what WebProNews wrote about Friday when data from SeekingAlpha was released indicating that LinkedIn is a major growth driver for Microsoft. The data showed that LinkedIn has consistently delivered a stable average of ARPU growth of 23%.

    Meanwhile, LinkedIn also delivers 277% better lead generation than Facebook or Twitter. Similarly, the platform provides 12.84x higher cost-per-click than Twitter and 4.4x higher than Facebook.

    One thing is clear: LinkedIn is not only a major growth driver for Microsoft, but as Reads points out, the platform is a critical component to any company building its brand.

  • 5 Digital Marketing Mistakes Beginners Keep Making

    5 Digital Marketing Mistakes Beginners Keep Making

    From the local grocery shop to conglomerates – every business needs digital marketing. And the beginning is the most difficult part.

    People new to digital marketing often find themselves stunned by its size and complexity. That is why we are going to talk about the most common digital marketing mistakes beginners make.

    Let’s jump right into it!

    1.   Not using social media

    Everyone is on social media today. In the last decade, social media has become the most influential channel for digital marketing – both for new brands and for well-established ones.

    So, why do beginners fail to utilize this powerful tool?

    The short answer is that people new to social media don’t understand the power of following through. For example, brands new to Instagram start out great. They create a nice tone of voice, followed by pleasant aesthetics. They gain some traction, and boom – radio silence for days, even weeks, making the brand lose its chance to promote itself.

    The key to preventing this from happening is planning your content upfront and posting consistently.

    2.   Overlooking cybersecurity

    Since virtually everything online is automated, we often overlook things like cybersecurity.

    Now, when it comes to digital marketing, you will probably deal with a lot of different platforms at the same time. The larger your brand is, the more work needs to be done cybersecurity-wise.

    Losing access to your accounts (e.g., Instagram or WordPress) can set you back to square one.

    But, it’s not all that bad. You just need to take a proactive stance toward cybersecurity. Here’s where you can start:

    ●          Sync your accounts whenever possible.

    ●          Use 2FA (2-factor authentication).

    ●          Get a VPN to help you browse the web safely.

    ●          Triple-check the links you open to avoid phishing and other scams.

    ●          Make sure you have a clear list of people who have access to your brand’s accounts, and keep it as short as possible.

    3.  Trying too hard

    Contrary to the not-following-through concept, we have tried-too-hard as another common mistake in digital marketing. While we can’t exactly put a definition on trying too hard, we can outline what it means in terms of digital marketing.

    Brands often try to stay relevant by using memes and writing witty copy based on current events. This may sound great at first, but it leads brands (especially new ones) into risky territory. If your brand isn’t about memes and news, you should steer clear of these methods as marketing strategies.

    One more trap beginners often fall into is posting about the product/service they’re offering exclusively. If your digital presence revolves entirely around your product, you won’t provide actual value for your followers. Add a human touch to your posts, share a story, a testimonial, or some kind of interactive content.

    4.   Failing to keep track of stats

    Reaping rewards from your ad campaigns feels great. But the real power lies in documenting both failure and success.

    Most digital marketing work revolves around trial and error and the concept of A/B testing. This means you should write down the results so you can repeat what works and avoid what doesn’t.

    You will feel the full effect of well-done documentation a few years down the line, but it will certainly be worth it.

    5.   Not taking breaks

    Lastly, we need to talk about the exhaustion and fatigue that digital marketers face all the time. As you probably know, digital marketers are the modern-day jack of all traders. Trends change almost daily, new platforms emerge every year, and all this can lead to burnout faster than you can say “conversion”.

    The cure to digital burnout is time away from your laptop and work. Plan a time of the day when you can disconnect from the world. Meditate (you can find guided meditations on YouTube or on apps like Yours App), go for a walk, cook a three-course meal, or play with your pet.

    The stress that digital marketing brings is rarely sudden. It’s rather a cumulative effect of all the small things you have to do and keep track of on a daily basis.

    It’s ok to make mistakes

    Every beginning is difficult, but there’s no need to be discouraged by possible bumps along the way.

    It’s good to talk about the most frequent mistakes beginners keep making. The world of digital marketing looks intimidating as is, and it’s expected for newbies to make mistakes. Hopefully, this article will help you prevent some of them!

    Just remember to stay safe and to take breaks. Good luck!

  • Three KPIs You Should Be Using To Measure Your Digital Campaigns’ Success

    Three KPIs You Should Be Using To Measure Your Digital Campaigns’ Success

    One of the trickiest aspects of digital marketing is measuring campaign success. You want to understand your return on investment (ROI), and you don’t want to just track vanity metrics. With all that in mind, tracking the right key performance indicators (KPIs) allows you to accurately measure success

    Does your boss want you to “raise brand awareness” with your upcoming digital campaign? That’s not a very specific goal. Instead, you could choose to measure how long visitors spend on your website after clicking on your ad. Are you supposed to “sell more product”? Instead, you could choose that you want to get 500 clicks on your call-to-action button and convert 2% of those clicks into purchases. 

    As you plan your digital campaigns, ask yourself: Am I measuring outcomes in a way that’s meaningful to my company’s bottom line? Are my measurements accurate? For example, you might know that your banner ad got 75 clicks. But if you don’t know how many clicks converted or how much you spent on each click, “75” doesn’t mean much. So, consider using the following key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your success. 

    Conversions

    The most obvious KPI is conversions. How many units did you sell? How many people signed up for your course? You can measure conversions a couple different ways. One is tracking when visitors become leads. An example would be when someone visits your website from an ad and then gives you their email address in exchange for a coupon code. You can also measure conversions from lead to customer. This, for example, is when someone from your email list purchases one of your products.

    These measurements can be tracked based on digital consumer behavior (like signing up for an email list). There are also opportunities to measure conversions from digital marketing campaigns in retail stores. For example, some grocery and drugstores use a product called Cooler Screens, which are smart screens built into the doors of the cooler sections. The screens have identity-blind sensors that track customer presence and interaction with the coolers. The ads on the screens change depending on the context (a hot day? A sale on name-brand sodas?). Using this kind of technology, digital marketers can match location, inventory, sales, and customer interaction to discover how ads impact buyer behavior. Similar technology will likely be used for many different industries in the near future, giving digital marketers even richer data. As you plan your digital campaigns, explore whether your industry offers unique placement opportunities that provide more point-of-sale conversion data.

    Conversion Rate

    It’s not enough to know how many conversions you have — you also need to know your conversion rate. This allows you to plan your digital marketing spend. 

    Here’s an example: You have $3,000 to spend on a Facebook ad, which you guesstimate will get your ad in front of about 2,100 people. Your ads typically have an 8% click rate. This particular ad leads to a landing page with a 6% conversion rate, based on your last campaign. Based on your revenue goals, you want to land 20 new customers and 10 returning customers from the ad. You do the math: 2100 ad views x .08 click rate x .06 conversion rate = 10 total customers. 

    Because this is far short of the 30 customers you need, you have a few options. You could try new creative on your landing page. You could tweak the target audiences for your ad. You could look at other past campaigns and see if you have better luck with YouTube pre-roll ads or Instagram story ads. Or, you could adjust your budget. 

    Because you understand conversion rate, you’re able to design a successful campaign based on what’s important to your bottom line. 

    Cost Per Customer

    Cost per customer is a vital measurement of digital marketing success. In the previous example, you adjusted your campaign based on conversion rates. Now, you want to look at how much each customer cost you. If you went with your original plan of spending $3000 and getting 10 customers, that means you’re spending $100 per customer. That might make sense if you’re selling a car or a college education, but not if you’re selling a $40 pair of sunglasses. 

    It’s important to have solid benchmarks to go with your cost per customer data. This allows you to discern whether you’re targeting people who would have bought your product anyway. Going back to the retail digital screens example, you can run A/B tests between stores. This can tell you if your ad makes a difference in sales. Or, if you’re running a seven-day banner ad, you can compare sales with the same seven days the previous year. That way, you have more context about the specific impact of your digital marketing.

    Other KPIs Can Also Help Reach Your Goals

    The KPIs listed above are generally considered lagging indicators, meaning they show how your campaign did. You can use them to guide your next campaign or make adjustments mid-campaign. Leading indicators (such as followers on social media) are used more for predicting the trajectory of a campaign or business goal. 

    There are many more KPIs and marketing performance metrics you could be tracking, but these three are a good starting point. Once you’ve run a campaign tracking these KPIs, you can make adjustments to design even better digital campaigns, each time around. 

  • Oracle Turns to AI to Automate Digital Marketing With Fusion Marketing

    Oracle Turns to AI to Automate Digital Marketing With Fusion Marketing

    In an industry first, Oracle is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help automate digital marketing.

    AI is revolutionizing a wide range of industries, but Oracle is applying it to digital marketing campaigns, with its newly announced Fusion Marketing platform. Unlike many lead generation systems, that merely raise brand awareness, Fusion Marketing is specifically designed to generate leads.

    Fusion Marketing uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically score leads at the account level, predict when consumers are ready to talk to a salesperson, and generate a qualified sales opportunity in any CRM system.

    Oracle hopes Fusion Marketing will address the disconnect many salespeople feel when using a CRM system, where siloed data often works against making a sale. Oracle’s new system is designed to address that and accelerate marketing campaigns by automating the lead generation process from end-to-end.

    “It is time for our industry to think differently about marketing and sales automation so that we can transform CRM into a system that actually works for both the marketer and the salesperson,” said Rob Tarkoff, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience. “This is not about forecasts and rollups or a reporting tool to see how the sales force is performing, but instead about turning CRM into a system that helps sellers sell. A huge part of that change is bringing marketing and sales teams together and eliminating the low-value, time consuming tasks that distract from building customer relationships and closing deals. That’s why we have invested so much time engineering a system that will help marketers fully automate lead generation and qualification and get highly qualified leads to the sales team faster.”

    Oracle’s Fusion Marketing is just the beginning, as experts say AI will continue to transform digital marketing.

    “Machine learning algorithms are integral to digital marketing and that will only increase over time. The best digital marketers have embraced this fact, and have already shifted their focus towards more human-first activities. Machines are better at crunching numbers and making data-driven decisions. But they still need humans to decide what data to feed into those systems. This comes from understanding human behavior, a deep sense of empathy, and expert-level storytelling that are hard to replicate through AI.” – Dennis Consorte, Digital Marketing Expert and Expert at Digital.com, told WebProNews.

  • How HubSpot is Using Surround Sound Marketing Strategy to Drive Sales

    How HubSpot is Using Surround Sound Marketing Strategy to Drive Sales

    “There is a very smart individual at HubSpot named Alex Birkett based out of Austin, Texas,” says Scott Tousley of HubSpot. “He is working on this concept that is really starting to take off called Surround Sound Strategy. Essentially what that means is that it runs with the notion that marketers are selfish. All we care about is how do we drive more traffic to our website.”

    Scott Tousley, Senior Team Lead of User Acquisition for all products at HubSpot, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth Podcast by David Kelly, General Manager at Sumo Dojo. Tousley discusses how HubSpot is using Surround Sound Marketing Strategy to drive leads and sales:

    Surround Sound Marketing Strategy Starting to Take Off

    There is a very smart individual at HubSpot named Alex Birkett based out of Austin, Texas. He is working on this concept that is really starting to take off called Surround Sound Strategy. Essentially what that means is that it runs with the notion that marketers are selfish. All we care about is how do we drive more traffic to our website. I don’t care where it comes from. Whether it comes from search or social or referral traffic or email, it doesn’t matter. You’re always looking at how do I get more traffic to my website? The reality is that when we are trying to buy something you don’t go to one website. You go to multiple different websites when you are trying to make a purchasing decision.

    For example, I’m in South Lake Tahoe right now. One search I just did recently was “best bars in South Lake Tahoe.” I wanted to see a list and I wanted to see some reviews from a couple of different websites. I also like to surf, so let’s say I’m in the market for a new shortboard. So I search for “best shortboards 2019.” First, I’ll read a listicle, then I will go back to Google and I will click on the next list. Then I will go back again and click on the next list. Then I will start to narrow my decision based on seeing the same thing over and over. Once I narrow it down I will do a versus search such as “lost puddle jumper” vs. “channel islands average joe.” I’ve narrowed my decision at that point.

    We Want To Be At All Stages of the Purchasing Decision

    What we are trying to do at HubSpot right now is figure out how to be everywhere. We want to be at all stages of that purchasing decision when people are searching for “what is the best blank that exists today.” Well, there are a ton of lists that are out there and a ton of review sites and HubSpot’s B2B software (has to be there). There are a lot of review sites just dominating search engines right now like Capterra, G2 Crowd, and Software Advice. A lot of those are pay to play. You have got to pay to get listed on what appears when you land via search. Most of them are.

    But listicles are free. Not only are they free to get added to, but they are free to create. That’s one of the biggest things we are working on right now. How do we change our mindset from being so obsessed at driving traffic to our website? How do we make sure that HubSpot’s brand is everywhere when you are doing your product research and you are on many different websites? We actually sometimes prefer that we drive traffic to multiple different websites where we are listed versus just to our own. It’s good for social grouping.

    Listen to the full interview with HubSpot’s Scott Tousley.

  • Google May Open YouTube Ads to Rivals

    Google May Open YouTube Ads to Rivals

    In an ongoing effort to stave off an EU crackdown, Google is offering to open up its YouTube Ads platform to rivals.

    Google is under increased scrutiny in the US and the EU over its dominance in the ad market. Several bills and legislative efforts are being put forward to limit a company of Google’s size from dominating the entire advertising chain, something that Google currently does. In an effort to prevent the worst of the fallout, Google is now offering to open its YouTube Ads platform to rivals, according to Reuters.

    In particular, the EU’s competition watchdog raised concerns over Google requiring advertisers to use its own Ad Manager, rather than any competing platform, to place ads on YouTube. According to Reuters’ sources, Google has been discussing potential solutions with the Commission since last year in an effort to keep from being fined up to 10% of its global revenue.

    While the YouTube concession is a good start, sources familiar with the matter said the company will need to do more to secure a deal, an unsurprising stipulation given that YouTube is only one part of Google’s vast advertising business.

  • Yahoo Names Jessica Alba to Its Board

    Yahoo Names Jessica Alba to Its Board

    Yahoo appointed six people to its board, including Jessica Alba, Hollywood actress and entrepreneur.

    Verizon sold Yahoo to Apollo Funds in September 2021, essentially putting Yahoo under its own name for the first time in years. The company has been working to rebuild its fortunes and compete in an internet landscape far different from the one it started in. As part of its attempt, the company is reworking its board in an effort to increase diversity, according to Reuters.

    At the time of the purchase, Apollo Funds made it clear it intended to help rebuild Yahoo over the long haul:

    “We look forward to partnering with Yahoo’s talented employee base to build on the company’s strong momentum and position the new Yahoo for long-term success as a standalone consumer internet and digital media leader,” said Reed Rayman, Partner at Apollo.

    As Reuters points out, since the acquisition Yahoo has been growing its Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports properties, as well as its advertising an e-commerce platforms.

    The company is clearly determined to regain its place as one of the preeminent internet companies, and hopefully its latest efforts will help it accomplish its goal. More competition is a good things, and Yahoo is one of the few companies that has the name brand necessary to give Google and Meta a run for their money.