JB’s Digital Update 22nd Nov 2022

Meta has just published its Marketing Guide for Small Businesses this holiday season (Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas and New Year sales). It also includes insightful data from previous years. 

This is useful for SMEs as Meta still drives an awful lot of advertising revenue and sales, despite the layoffs, drop in revenue growth and general furore around Meta. Unsurprisingly, it is really trying to promote Reels as the answer to everything. (Yyyyesssss, but). 

Focus on creating good quality social content that grabs attention, shows how in-tune you are with the consumer psyche, is shareable and, importantly, memorable. You’ve got 5-15 seconds to do all that. Don’t get over-hyped by Reels if they don’t work for you. Flat traditional marketing is unlikely to translate to Reels, clicks and sales. Try Reels, but use text, image and other video ads if they work better for you. Let’s chat about how I can help you with social ads.

This is a really useful and insightful report on what to expect for marketers in 2023. Or at least what they might expect. 

It boils down to this: there’s a recession coming; segmentation is part of the answer;  CDPs and tech stacks in general are under-utilised by Marketing teams (this very much correlates to my experiences). So times will be tough, tech usage is the answer, but marketers are really poor at using tech. Hmmmm.

As ever, when times are tough, we need to work harder and work smarter. If budgets are tight, we need to spend them better to continue to bring value into businesses. It’s also really critical that we don’t have tech wastage. I’ve seen so many unused, unloved platforms having huge amounts of money spent on them – that could have funded other far more worthwhile activities. No different from usual really. Find out what you should be doing with your Digital Marketing in 2023 by talking to me. 

Google has added a handy little image tool to its Posts / Updates interface which allows you to crop images as you upload them before posting. 

This is handy if you are really time-stretched, are posting directly to Google (rather than through a posting tool), and haven’t edited your images prior. In most instances, tools on most mobile phones tend to be more powerful than any of those available through interfaces. 

Keep this little snippet for those moments when you’re uploading content to Google and you realise you’ve forgotten to crop your images. Talk to me today about optimising your Google Business Profile and Local SEO. 

Now this is handy for the shopping season. Google Search Console has released a new section in GSC covering Shopping tab listings allowing / encouraging more retailers to include their products. 

It’s driven by Product structured data rather than clunky product feeds and is open to eligible members of Google’s Merchant Center. If you use Shopify or WordPress / WooCommerce it’s likely the structured data and listings can be automated. 

This is relatively easy win to get more and better data into Google search specifically for users looking for products. They are actively interested in purchasing, doing this helps them to complete that task.

Contact me to get help implementing this quickly and getting more sales this holiday season. 

If you are a YouTube Shorts Creator in the US, you may well be eligible for this trial to run shopping and direct affiliate links within your videos. It’s expected this will spread to Australia in time. 

This is a great little option for more revenue if you have a successful Shorts channel, and you’re in the US, and you have products / affiliate services to sell. For others, not so much unfortunately, at least not currently. This shows how the Shorts & Reels market is expanding thanks to TikTok’s leadership and is becoming / will be a significant revenue driver in the near future. If you’re not into Shorts or Reels, you need to be. Let’s talk about marketing and social content.