Digital Marketing News This Week

The digital marketing industry is moving quickly and if you want to stay on top of all the latest trends, it can be difficult. That’s why we’re here for you! In this week’s article, we’ll highlight some important announcements from digital marketing giant Google that will help your business (and blog) grow. Find out more in our weekly post!

It’s a never-ending cycle – social media sites like Facebook and Twitter come up with new features or updates every day, which means marketers have to keep up with them so they don’t fall behind. This week was no exception: Google has launched new eligible search campaign recommendations. In addition to this, there are target impression share simulators and U.S. Ad recovery continues to soar and has surged up to 52% in April. We’ve got all the details in this article below!

B2B Marketing News: B2B Video Completion Rates, US Ad Spend Soars, Google’s New Starline 3D Chat, & What Makes A Brand Meaningful

Google Ads Has New Smart Bidding Features
Google has launched new eligible search campaign recommendations, along with target impression share simulators — two of several new updates of interest to digital marketers that have been rolled out to the firm’s popular Google Ads offering, the search giant recently announced. SEO Roundtable

U.S. Ad Recovery Continues To Soar, Surges 52% In April
April 2021 advertising spending was up 52 percent in the U.S. year-over-year, the biggest increase in more than a year, and this recovery has also been seen in more ad spending categories than previous months, according to recently-released ad spending index data. MediaPost

LinkedIn introduces Event Ads and “boosted” posts
LinkedIn (client) has made new post promotion features available from brand pages and rolled out a slew of new event advertising and analytics options, including custom streaming and mobile page analytics, the Microsoft-owned platform recently announced. Search Engine Land

What B2B Firms Use Marketing Agencies For
31 percent of B2B firms utilize marketing agencies for brand mission, vision, and values initiatives, while 22 percent use agencies for brand purpose strategy — two of several statistics of interest to online marketers in newly-released survey data. MarketingProfs

https://www.toprankblog.com/2021/05/b2b-marketing-news-052821/

Instagram Ad Targeting: 8 Valuable Audiences

Why You Need to Know Your Audience’s Awareness Level

The first step toward improving your Instagram ads targeting is knowing your audience’s awareness level. Are they hearing about your brand for the first time? Or are they already loyal customers?

Your target audience should fit into one of these groups:

Top of the funnel (TOFU): These prospects have a low level of awareness and may not have engaged much with your brand’s content yet. They might even be entering your conversion funnel for the first time. Demographic-, interest-, and behavior-based targeting often works best for TOFU prospects, especially when you pair this audience with one of Instagram’s Awareness ad objectives.

Middle of the funnel (MOFU): These Instagram users already know about your brand but need a bit more information about your services before considering a purchase. They’ve already interacted with your brand, perhaps by watching a video, saving a post, or clicking through to your website. With remarketing audiences and Consideration ad objectives, you can successfully retarget these prospects.

Bottom of the funnel (BOFU): These customers typically have purchase intent and are ready to book a service. They just need a gentle nudge from your ad campaign. Users who have already completed high-intent actions—such as filling out a lead form—are great candidates for this type of audience, especially with a Conversion objective.

https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/instagram-ad-targeting-8-valuable-audiences/

SEO and Accessibility: Technical SEO [Series Part 3]

Perceivable

As a technical SEO, you’re probably most concerned with perceivable because your day-to-day operations, your day-to-day work stream involves making sure that the pages, the content, the experiences you’re creating are accessible to search engines and perceivable to search engines.

A lot of times when we go through SEO recommendations or SEO audits, I hear a lot of common themes, like the header tag is baked into the image and so a search engine can’t see it, or the content I’m producing is visible to bots but it’s not visible to people. These are issues with base level perception. I want you to take that mindset and consider if you apply that to your whole audience as well. So can all of your people that are hoping to engage with your service or product or experience, are they able to perceive all the things you have to offer at a base level?

Operable

Okay, so we’re able to perceive the content. But how do we make sure that it’s operable?

HTML sitemaps

A couple of SEO recommendations that I often see people making are build an HTML sitemap and put breadcrumbs on your page. A lot of times you might get some pushback from that. The HTML site map is super important we know for SEO, for discoverability of those pages deep in our website’s hierarchy.

We know that breadcrumbs are also pretty equally important for discoverability. Both of these elements help users with assistive technology better navigate the website. The HTML site map allows for if your menu doesn’t include all the pages on your website or if it’s confusing or you’re using JavaScript or some other technology that’s not accessible to my tech stack.

https://moz.com/blog/technical-seo-and-accessibility

Writing Facebook Ads for Sensitive Products and Services

Facebook doesn’t like ads that reference moneymaking opportunities or point out negative attributes of their users. For this reason, if you’re in a sensitive field, like weight loss, your ad copy has to speak to your ideal client and also make them feel good as they scroll through their news feed.

#1: Open With a Qualifier

The first two or three lines of your ad copy should be your qualifier. The text should speak to your ideal customer so they qualify themselves as needing to read more to learn what your campaign is about and how it can serve them.

These lines are just as important as the image and headline you use in your campaign. And they’re typically followed by three dots that people have to click to read the rest of the copy.

#2: Reference the Pain Point

Once you’ve piqued the interest of your dream clients with your qualifying statement, it’s time to help them focus on their problem and pain points. Because your campaign is offering a solution, you have to direct your audience’s attention to the uncomfortable feelings their problem creates.

#3: Make Yourself Relatable

The relatability section of your ad copy is where you get to ride in like a knight in shining armor to save the day. Let your ideal client know that you’ve either been in their shoes or you’ve helped clients in a similar situation who have gotten great results working with you.

https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/writing-facebook-ads-for-sensitive-products-and-services/

Don’t Know Code? You Still Need to Know Google’s Core Web Vitals

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals encompass page experience elements. Unlike other data from your site crawled by Google bots, this data involves user behavior taken from Chrome usage.

To check the Core Web Vitals for your website, log in to your Google Search Console account, and go to Experience > Core Web Vitals report:

TIP: To dig deeper, open the report and click on the issue line you want to investigate.

The report reflects two use cases – mobile and desktop. Though Google hasn’t said which one carries more weight, the placement of the mobile report above the desktop report could be a subtle indicator. Plus, though not a ranking factor, Google is keenly interested in AMP – accelerated mobile pages.

Keeping that in mind, a mobile-first approach probably would be more helpful for your website’s Core Web Vitals impact, though that doesn’t mean you can ignore the desktop version.

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/05/google-core-web-vitals/

6 B2B Content Marketing Summertime Sizzlers To Increase Audience Engagement

1 — Go Live

Uncensored. Interactive. Up close and personal. There’s nothing quite like a live stream to break free from safe and boring content. There’s a reason every social media site, from Instagram to LinkedIn, is doing live streams.

Granted, going live is not without its risks. If you’re concerned about potential slip-ups or off-message chatter, you can always practice ahead of time. Live doesn’t have to mean “completely improvised and unscripted.”

A few more tips for going live:

Consider hiring a host to help keep the conversation flowing
Have someone behind the scenes to watch the comment thread and engage the audience
Use a tool like restream for multi-platform streaming
Prime the pump for audience questions by having employees in the audience with pre-written questions.
Make sure to record the stream for repurposing later

2 — Take People Behind the Scenes

“Authenticity” is one of those marketing buzzwords that makes an easy thing seem difficult. People like brands that are “authentic?” No, people like to know there are actual people of good will at work behind the brand’s messaging. That’s all authenticity means: Real people saying true things.

3 — Try Interactive Content

You don’t have to create an entire immersive VR experience to snag people’s attention, either — just a few touches of animation, interactivity and sound can go a long way.

4 — Explore Social-First Content

One way to change the equation is through social-first content: That is, content designed to be consumed right there in the social media feed. For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is the right destination for social-first content.

https://www.toprankblog.com/2021/06/b2b-summertime-engagement/

Discover the Secrets to Successful Content Creation

Take a practical view of content creation

Answer these three questions to establish and activate your organization’s content creation capabilities:

Who will create/contribute to the content?
How will your creative efforts align with strategic business and marketing goals?
How will we craft compelling stories that our audience will love?

You can assemble a content creation force in a variety of ways. Each model offers a distinct complement of pros, cons, and practical considerations. Many organizations use a combination of the following models:

Hire a dedicated writing staff: If you place a high priority on content creation, want to produce a high volume of content, or need content to fill multiple channels and platforms at once, it may be worth having full-time writing talent to maintain control of the process.
Leverage internal subject matter experts: If your content requires a high level of technical know-how or other specialized expertise, incentivize your executive management, sales teams, or other fellow employees to contribute content.
Outsource to freelancers or other specialists: Smaller businesses, startups, nonprofits, or other companies that aren’t ready to invest in full-scale editorial capabilities may prefer to work with freelance writers (including trained journalists) or to partner with a content agency or other creative services provider.
Solicit external contributors: If you are a B2B business with a strong community of subscribers, industry thought leaders may be interested in guest blogging on your owned media platform in exchange for valuable backlinks to increase their reach and exposure. If your business has a B2C focus, look to enable your ardent fans and followers to create user-generated content on your brand’s behalf.
Automate the process: While content creation via artificial intelligence is in its early stages, every indication signals that automation will play a significant role in content marketing in the not-too-distant future. Brands willing to invest in and experiment with the technology will be poised to make a big splash, leaving their competitors behind in the kiddie pool of AI-driven content innovation.

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/05/guide-successful-content-creation/