Today in Digital Marketing - 🎂 = 1

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

A new feature on Facebook could get more brands into doing Live broadcasts… both Amazon and Apple announce BIG bets they’ve placed on podcasting… and does having the keywords you want to rank for in your domain name help or hurt your listing. What Google says is different than what most people believe. MY FUNDRAISER FOR ADDICTIONS TREATMENT: http://bit.ly/todrun Not subscribed yet? Get direct subscribe links at TodayInDigital.com HELP SPREAD THE WORD: • Tweet It: bit.ly/tweet-tidm to preview a tweet you can publish • Review Us: RateThisPodcast.com/today ABOUT THE PODCAST: • Produced by: engageQ.com • Advertising: TodayInDigital.com/ads • Our Slack community: TodayInDigital.com/slack • Transcripts: See each episode at TodayInDigital.com • Theme music: Mark Blevis (all other music licensed by Source Audio) TOD’S SOCIAL MEDIA: • Twitter: twitter.com/todmaffin • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/todmaffin • Tod’s agency: engageQ.com • TikTok: /tiktok.com/@todmaffin • Twitch: twitch.tv/todmaffin Source links and full transcripts at TodayInDigital.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todayindigital/messageOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Give your finances a lift. Today, a new feature on Facebook could convince you to start doing Facebook Live broadcasts after all. Both Amazon and Apple announced big bets they're placing on podcasting. And does having the keywords you want to rank for in your domain name help or hurt your ranking? What Google says is different than what most people believe. It's Wednesday, September 16th, 2020. Happy Independence Day, Mexico. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here is what you missed today in digital marketing. We're going to start with a bunch of Facebook stuff, perhaps the most important, the prices in the ad market. Data from Social Insider says the average CPM rate has been steadily climbing

since March. I don't think anyone's surprised by that. The study was of about 3,900 ad accounts and covered all Facebook's major placements. Advertisers were from around the world in a number of verticals. The average CPM in August was $5.31. Again, that's CPM rates. For comparison, it was about 77 cents cheaper in January. But this year's August is still quite a bit down from last August when it was more than $1.50 higher. As for cost per click, an average of 43 cents in August. And I know you're thinking, wait, what? Where do I find 43 cent clicks? Remember, this is a wide global average. I know your clicks are like six bucks now. I'd be grateful you're not on LinkedIn. Have you seen the CPC rates there? Anyway, that 43 cent average was also down a bit compared to August

of 2019. But are more people clicking? Average click-through rate last month was just a hair over 3%. That's down, but only by a smidge from last August. Interestingly, among the accounts they studied, CTR had been mostly steady for about a year. There was a noticeable spike this past June, then it dropped and is now slowly climbing back up. I have no idea why people were more likely to click in June. Moving on to campaign objectives.

Three objectives were head and shoulders above the others in terms of usage, and they are, in order, conversions, post-engagement, and link clicks. Each of those captured about 25% of the total number of objectives. Facebook today announced it has added automated closed captioning for Facebook live videos. As you probably know, for a while now, their platform has been able to put closed captions into videos that you upload. One big area missing were live videos. This actually prevented some organizations from going live at all. One of our clients here at my agency is a Canadian federal government group. As you may know, there are two official languages in Canada, English and French,

and so anything the federal government does must be available in both languages, and of course videos must have closed captioning for the hearing impaired. Since that wasn't possible with live videos before, our client just chose to never go live, missing out on a bunch of engagement and reach and all the other goodies. Now, Facebook can put captions onto live videos in real time, and not just in English, but also French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German. Quoting Facebook,

Although automated speech recognition has been around since the late 2000s, it is still an exceptionally difficult task. In the type of conversational speech that is present in live streams, people don't always naturally speak clearly or wait their turn to speak. Unpredictable background noise, the large variety of accents and dialects, and the wide range of tones that influence human speech make speech recognition even harder. Two smaller items before we leave Facebook here. First, as you heard on this show last week, Facebook will soon limit the number of concurrent ads you can run. The more you've spent in the past, the more slots you get. There is now a dashboard available if you want to see your limits.

It's at facebook.com slash ads slash ad underscore limits. There's a link in the transcript of the show at todayindigital.com. One nice touch when you go there, you will see the limits of all pages that you have administrative access to. And Facebook has launched a new 20 week professional certificate program. It's 100 hours and includes broader social skills than just their own platform. Courses themselves are free, but if you want expert grading,

portfolio development, and employer consortium, whatever the hell those are, that's 49 bucks a month. Okay, moving off Facebook and over to podcasts. And one more sign that the big platforms are taking it seriously. Enter Amazon stage left. Amazon Music has launched a podcast platform of its own.

So far, it seems to be only available in the US and the UK and a big hire by Apple. They have poached Jake Shapiro to be the head of Creative Partnerships. Jake is the co-founder of the independent public radio exchange known as PRX and the co-founder of Radio Public. I've actually met Jake a few times at public radio conferences. He is a smart guy. This is a very big hire and shows just how much Apple is putting its chips down in the podcast space. Still ahead, Google shoots down one of the most popular assumptions about ranking that we digital marketers have had. And why is the mobile app for the fast food chain McDonald's now selling insurance?

That's in a minute, when Today in Digital Marketing continues. And normally here, you'd hear an ad. But today is different. A while ago, I found this great podcast called The Tech Meme Ride Home. It was a daily news show about developments in technology. And I thought, this is great. Like, I've got to find the digital marketing version of it. But as hard as I looked, I just couldn't find one.

And so, one day, I made one. Just to see if it would catch on. That day, exactly one year ago. It's Monday, September 16th, 2019. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, Facebook may be shutting down. Since then, we've grown to about 1,200 regular daily listeners, nearly a quarter of a million downloads, and about 120 bucks in ad revenue. That's 120 Canadian, so like 10 bucks American. Between myself and my team, each episode takes us about four hours a day, and we try really hard to make this a good use of your time. And in case you've noticed, we try to put a smile on your face with the last story of each episode. And I'm going to ask you for something. About 13 years ago, I nearly lost my life to an

addiction. I spent months at a residential treatment center in Canada called Edgewood. It saved my life. But it was expensive. We had to literally mortgage our house. There are many, many people who just need treatment, and I am doing a fundraiser run to put more money into the foundation that pays for treatment for people who can't otherwise afford it. So, and I'm only going to ask you this once a year, if you have learned something from this show that saved your brand money, or saved you an embarrassing conversation with your boss,

or made you look super smart in front of your client, if this podcast has actually helped you in real terms, please consider donating even just five bucks. The link is today in digital.com slash run. There's also a mobile friendly easy tap link. If you swipe over to this episode's notes, brands or individuals who donate more than $100 will get a free 30-second ad on this show. You provide the MP3. More than $250 will get you an invitation to a private group Zoom session I'll be doing outlining the negative response strategy that we use for social media engagement here at my agency, a methodology that we developed on our own. And donations of more than $500, that session will be private just to you and your staff,

and we can cover anything you want in that hour. Just email me the receipt that you get. If you can't donate, that's fine. Just rate and review this show wherever you hear it. That really does help too. Okay, thank you for your patience. Now back to the show. Quick, when you Google shoes,

what domain do you think will come up at the top of the organic results? If you said shoes.com, you're right. How about the keyword hotel tonight? First result, hoteltonight.com. It's been long believed, no more than believed, accepted as canonical wisdom, that if you want to rank highly for a keyword phrase, just make that phrase your domain name. My good friend and book co-author

Mark Blevis, who actually composed this show's theme, he runs a firm called Full Duplex. His firm does digital public affairs work. And so he bought the domain digitalpublicaffairs.com. And now, sure enough, Google that phrase and you'll get Mark's company. What does Google say about all this? Does having keywords in your domain help you rank for those keywords? In short, no. Google's John Mueller. You don't get a special bonus from having a keyword like that in your top-level domain. Just because a website has a keyword in its domain name doesn't mean that it's more relevant than others for that keyword. Okay, but as searchenginejournal.com noted, quote, this contradicts what some ranking factor studies will say about keywords in a domain,

unquote. But there's another factor to consider, said Mueller in this video posted to the Google Webmaster YouTube channel. Businesses evolve over time, and moving domains is hard. So it often makes sense to pick a domain name that you can use for the long run and not necessarily one that just matches what you're offering today. For example, if you focus on making awesome blue widgets and build your website on bestbluewidgets.com, what do you do when you start offering red widgets? So instead of spending too much time on the domain name or top level domain, focus instead on building up a site that you can continue to use for the long run. And finally, a surprising new menu item is appearing on the mobile app of McDonald's.

Insurance. It's not food poisoning insurance or anything. It is, of course, a marketing ploy. Quoting Marketing Dive, McDonald's today is letting users select one of two spice-surance offers when they order the new menu item, Spicy Chicken McNuggets. Those unsure they'll like the new flavor can receive a backup order of Chicken McNuggets for free, while customers who are convinced that they'll like Spicy Chicken McNuggets can receive an additional order of them, unquote. Okay, clever, funny. But what pushed this over the top for me was that, legally speaking, they are literally offering real insurance here.

Like, it's a joke and all, but this offering does technically fall under federal insurance regulations. And so, as part of the announcement, they included a 9,000-word insurance contract. And yes, friends, I'm going to read you part of it. Spice assurance will cover any and all areas of your tongue that feel a flame. The tongue flame would be a metaphorical and unquantifiable result of biting into the spicy chicken McNugget, though you may feel fire tongue. In no way should this be misconstrued as you morphing into a dragon. This is not a thing.

McDonald's is not liable for any such human to mythical creature transformation, unquote. Imagine being on the marketing team who had to get approvals for the phrase, you may feel fire tongue. This is the first time the company has added a new McNuggets flavor since they were added to the menu way back in 1983. So, a year's worth of episodes. I look forward to the next year of keeping you at the top of your game in digital marketing, online advertising, and SEO.

And last time I'll ask for a year, please consider donating to my fundraiser to help get people into addictions treatment. The donate site is mobile friendly and it's at todayindigital.com slash run or tap the link in today's episode. And thank you. I'm Todd Maffin. More news from the world of digital marketing tomorrow. Talk to you then. Want to own part of the company that makes your favorite burger? Now you can. With partial shares from TD Direct Investing, you can own less than one full share.

So expensive stocks are within reach. Learn more at TD.com slash partial shares. TD, ready for you.