JB’s Digital Update 1st August 2023

Luckily for us, it appears the old saying about marketing being nixed at the first sign of a recession is not completely true this time around, as all the majors (Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook, Amazon, and a start-up called Bing) have announced increases in ad revenue across the last quarter. This could reflect increasing competition, forcing ad prices up, or increased bids to increase share, or increased inventory due to more searches / doomscrolling, or general web activity.

One thing that is striking is the fact that Meta’s revenue has increased by a stunning 11%, while the others were smaller. Who says Facebook and Insta are creaky old platforms on their last legs? Not this Social Media Consultancy! So, ads are going great, the time is now to increase digital marketing spend, and if you want to talk to me about increasing revenue from PPC & Paid Social Ads, I’ll be happy to chat.

Each week, something new and exciting happens in the Twittersphere. This week the one-time social media network has had a sudden rebranding away from a cute little blue bird to a stark X and is now called X, which is just terrifically snappy. There are some unfortunate minor obstacles to a smooth transition on this one, namely that Microsoft and Meta appear to have trademarks on X in a very similar space, and that Twitter didn’t control the handle @X, or various other @X+whatever handles (some of which have long been used by adult entertainment companies). That’s now been fixed, but my, my, what a mess.

This kind of complete marketing & branding do-over can be good if a brand is completely toxic, or if its old brand no longer applies to a product, but in this case, the last 12 month’s aside, you have to wonder if Twitter really was such a bad brand. The dream is supposedly that it will be part of an all-in-one, do everything app similar to the Chinese WeChat, but if the last few months are anything to go by the chances of that happening are getting smaller.

In my role as VCMO, I can help you navigate the challenges of branding and rebranding, and in my role as a VCDO, I can help you manage the challenges of digital transition. Talk to me.

I don’t know why, but I get the feeling all the major social networks are rushing to fill the void / crater of the unfolding disaster that is X, The App Formerly Known As Twitter (X-TAFKAT). And this week, TikTok announces its own mechanism for the land grab with an expansion into text posts, and not just video posts.

At the moment, they are fairly simple beasts with stickers, backgrounds and tags / hashtags, not quite the threaded shorter-form discussion X-TAFKAT and Threads have gone for. We’ll see how TikTok users cope with having to read as opposed to just ingesting 4 hours of 15 second clips in one sitting, but I’d definitely put my toe in the water and create / post some content. Talk to me about Social Media Management.

Slowly but surely, Google Ads is nudging, pushing, corralling us all towards Performance Max campaigns. Google Merchant Centre (and PMax by extension) have now added a Collections feature, enabling you to group products into specific collections – this is really handy if you have a bunch of different product types. It’s not wholly clear if this will allow you to promote an individual collection, or if this is more an admin, creative and reporting grouping.

Secondly, Google is also allowing us to upgrade Dynamic Search Ads and Google Display Ads into an existing Performance Max campaign. This allows the the campaigns to take advantage of existing Google learnings without having to go through the (sometimes painful) learning phase.

With the push towards broad match, changes in attribution modelling, these really are signs that Google wants us all to put our campaigns into the Black Box of Performance Max campaigns. Perfect, aside from the fact that PMax really is a black box and it is very difficult to get any useable optimisation information out of it, so you have to get your optimisation done on the way in. Talk to me about Google Ads and setting up Performance Max campaigns.

Email is dead, long live email! With all the changes in privacy, tracking and web standards, most email open rates have gone to pot. Some people are fretting about this, because, well, they have yet to learn that a “rate” is almost utterly useless when it comes to measuring performance objectively. There are so many fundamental differences that affect the “rate” that is it best only used as a very broad general indicator. If you are using Open Rates as a KPI, or giving them more than a glance, you are doing performance measurement wrong.

The figures you should be using instead? Actions, such as tracked revenue, tracked traffic, or tracked conversions using UTM tagging, or other URL magic to ensure you know the actual definable outcome of sending people mail.

I have seen recently, email providers mutter about managing lists & sends to maintain open rates, which is great for them as it means slightly less junk mail being sent through their networks, but if your open rates go up, but revenue stays the same, you’ve undertaken a lot of effort to make someone else’s figures look good, rather than focusing on driving more actions and outcomes from your comms. Seriously, talk to me about email and CRM or Conversions, or even Analytics and Performance.

This week has been nothing short of thrilling in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing! From Twitter’s janky rebranding to Google and Facebook’s recession-defying ad revenue spikes, it’s clear that the landscape is ripe with opportunities and challenges. And let’s not forget the TikTok takeover and Google Ads nudging us towards Performance Max campaigns – it’s a dynamic digital dance that demands attention!

Reach out to us today and embark on a transformative digital adventure that will leave your competitors in the dust.

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