Today in Digital Marketing - 151: The Campaign That Ran $100 Cost-PER-COMMENT

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. What happens when you boost a replay of your brand's Facebook Live video? Be protected. Be Zen. copies Instagram stories for a change. And the French, man, the French do not fool around. It's Wednesday, May 13th and the 20th day of Ramadan. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Here is what you missed today in digital marketing brought to you by Tresta.com. One of the strange limitations of Facebook's ad platform is that you can't boost a live video broadcast. So that preview with the get reminder button, something you'd think brands would really want to promote

Starting point is 00:01:10 to drive live viewer numbers, it's just not promotable in terms of an ad spend. Until, that is, your broadcast is over. And then Facebook treats it pretty much like any other video you can apply a budget to. So the question is, does putting an ad budget toward a replay of a live broadcast result in any decent uplift in key metrics? And the answer? Not really. At least according to the people at Agorapulse's social media lab, they ran an experiment where they took about $2,500 and used it to promote 18 different live video replays. And their results? Sure, reach was up, up of course up about 170 percent of our organic numbers but engagement in total only 24 comments 27 shares and 10 link clicks

Starting point is 00:01:55 for 2500 dollars quoting their blog post the most successful live video shows aren't selling anything in particular. Live shows are simply attempting to get engagement. Engagement is a hot commodity on Facebook these days as it pertains to organic posts, especially comments. Done correctly, a live video gets dozens and dozens of comments, reactions, and shares. Based on the very low engagement numbers from our boosted Facebook live video replays, we conclude, our boosting efforts were a failure. And yours might be as well. By the way, in case you're trying to do the math there, they ended up spending nearly $100 for each comment and share. And more than twice that amount on link clicks.

Starting point is 00:02:44 Man, it's like advertising on LinkedIn. Google's integration with PayPal is now live, so if you've got an e-commerce site, you can now link your company's PayPal accounts to your Google Merchant Center account. Also, if you're setting things up, apparently this new PayPal relationship will also make the merchant verification process a little faster. Here's how you do it. And thanks to Marketingland.com for this step-by-step. After you log into Google Merchant Center, click on the Tools icon in the upper left navigation and then Platforms. You'll then see the option to link your brand's PayPal account. You'll need to opt into Surfaces across Google in order to have your products eligible to appear in organic listings on Google Shopping, Search, Images, and elsewhere, unquote. So PayPal may not be in your brand's e-commerce

Starting point is 00:03:30 universe, but if it is, that's a nice touch. Way back in the early days of Google, one of the things you could do to boost your position in the index was to get links to your website published on other people's websites. This is still a thing, of course, for big websites anyway. Get a couple of news articles about your brand on CNN.com with a link back to your site and sure, you'll probably move up a little, maybe even a lot. And then when people started figuring this out, a whole industry appeared of somewhat shady people selling those backlinks. Give me 50 bucks, they'd say, and I will put a link to your website on 600 different websites,

Starting point is 00:04:08 and your traffic will explode. And you would. And they'd put those links on 600 really crappy forum sites or pages that are nothing but links to other suckers who also paid $50. Luckily, Google's gotten pretty good at figuring out which of those backlinks are from reputable publishers and which are just spammy.

Starting point is 00:04:26 And sometimes even big sites are caught in the middle there. Is Quora.com a spammy site? Kind of when you look at some of the answers, but also sometimes not. Anyway, Google search engineer John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that buying these links are not always in your best interest. Someone tweeted him saying, I am buying links right now, and there is literally nothing John Mueller can do to stop me. Mueller replied, Yeah, those weekend AliExpress shopping splurges can be hard to resist,

Starting point is 00:04:54 and it's surprising to get the results in a few months. What was I thinking? Why would I have ordered this? At least it was cheap. Indeed, the moral here, just don't buy those backlinks. Full stop. Still ahead, the tap is about to be turned back on.

Starting point is 00:05:11 Are you ready for the Facebook and Google reviews that are coming? What you said about your CEO during the pandemic may have lasting effects for your brand. And how digital marketing in the B2B space is forever changed. That's still ahead when Today in Digital Marketing continues. I want to talk to you about one of our sponsors, Tresta. Tresta is a mobile app for iPhone and Android that lets you do business calling and texting from anywhere. With Tresta, you can set up your business phone number, download the app, and start calling and texting unlimited right away. Tresta is the best business phone app on the market. Whether you're just starting your business or you're already established,

Starting point is 00:05:54 Tresta offers the call management features that empower you to communicate smarter and more efficiently. One of the best things about Tresta is it's so flexible. If you just need a business phone number, you can set up a local or toll-free number instantly. If you're looking for a complete business phone system, all their powerful call management features are included. Everything from auto attendance to call recording to user groups and so much more. It's just $15 per user per month with no contract, and you don't need any special equipment, just the smartphone you're already using. Start your free 30-day trial today at tresta.com slash today. That's T-R-E-S-T-A dot com slash today. A couple of months ago, both Google and Facebook paused reviews, meaning consumer ratings posted

Starting point is 00:06:42 during this pandemic just would not be published. I guess the rationale, and it makes sense, is that there are a lot of assholes out there who would complain about being asked to stay behind a plexiglass shield or stay six feet away from other shoppers. Well, some people are starting to see new reviews trickling back in, at least on Google. Local SEO consultant Kerry Hill said on Twitter this afternoon that, quote, the furloughed reviews that were submitted but not published will be reviewed before posting. But there is no time frame on when those will show up. To be honest, I don't think anyone really knows what's going to happen to these. The decision to drop these reviews, you know, probably a good idea, seemed a little rushed to me. There wasn't a ton of explanation around what would happen to them.

Starting point is 00:07:29 Indeed, here at our agency, where we handle engagement and moderation for a number of clients, we haven't seen a single review come through our third-party platform since about mid-March. But when I go directly to Google Maps, I can see reviews for, like, our local grocery store and things posted as recently as a few days ago. So, not entirely sure what's happening there, but all that to say, if you have stopped checking for reviews because they slowed down or stopped altogether, as a few days ago. So not entirely sure what's happening there, but all that to say, if you have stopped checking for reviews because they slowed down or stopped altogether, time to put checking those reviews back into your team's workflow.

Starting point is 00:07:56 So what was your marketing messaging during the peak of the pandemic? Did you mostly ignore the pandemic and keep pressing on with your regular content? Did you just stop your content entirely? Or did you reposition it and showcase your leadership, making changes for good? How you positioned your C-suite's response to COVID-19 a couple of weeks ago may have far-reaching effects into your future marketing success.

Starting point is 00:08:20 That's the main finding from a new Lucid report that found 83% of consumers said behavior by a company's leadership during the pandemic would influence whether they buy from that company after this whole thing dies down. 83%. Even more said how companies supported their employees during the crisis would have an effect on their brand loyalty. Think public health is outside of your category? Think again. Quoting MarketingDive.com, 81% said businesses have a responsibility to help solve social or policy issues, even those outside their product category or industry. And nearly three quarters of consumers in the survey, conducted between May 1st and

Starting point is 00:09:02 May 3rd, said they want to hear from corporate leaders now as the general public seeks information from trusted authorities. Unquote. So, how'd you do? It's not just B2C companies, of course, that need to communicate concern and humanity. Even stodgy legacy blue chip B2B firms need to change up their messaging these days. One thing that B2B has done, I think, tremendously well. Mark Emmond, the CEO of revenue marketing agency DemandSpring, he spoke to me earlier this week. We have increasingly recognized an amazing thing that B2B buyers are actually humans. They have emotions. And you can tap into these emotions.

Starting point is 00:09:46 And so, you know, we have seen B2B organizations step out from behind their well-manicured brands and really reveal themselves to be very human, to show empathy, to use humor, to show fear, to really engage with, you know, their B2B stakeholders in a way that is much more human and that is much more emotion driven. And it isn't all, you know, rational product features, capabilities and, you know, things that the rational part of our brain would, you know, would hold appeal to. Our full 30 minute conversation about how digital marketers

Starting point is 00:10:24 in the B2B space should be changing before this year is out is coming to you Saturday in a special weekend edition. Okay, not directly related to digital marketing, but I thought this was interesting. Earlier today, France enacted legislation that will force social media networks to remove content related to terrorism and child abuse within one hour of being told to.

Starting point is 00:10:52 And if they don't, they face a fine of up to 4% of their global revenue. Holy crap. In the case of Facebook, that would be about $3 billion in fines. For other content, the law there refers to as manifestly illicit. The platforms will have 24 hours to take that stuff down. The country has established a special digital prosecutor for this stuff. The far-right National Rally Party called the law a serious violation of freedom of expression. And finally, in the It's Not Just You file, if you're having problems placing Facebook ads or getting reporting there done today, it's not just you. Late last night, the Facebook ad platform

Starting point is 00:11:37 had an outage, a big one. Within an hour, engineers said they'd found the problem and were recovering from the outage. But as of the time I'm recording this, about 4 p.m. Eastern, that outage still seems to be in play. Also, Reddit was having some problems today, too. Also, Shopify apparently was down. Like, is the moon in Virgo today or something? What is happening? One thing that was up, stories on LinkedIn, at least in the Netherlands. But, you know, it's coming.

Starting point is 00:12:05 It's inevitable. We will all be vertical soon. And Snapchat updated their in-app analytics today. You can now see all the replies to a specific post and then slap any of them to your own story. Very similar to Instagram's Q&A sticker format. If you found this podcast a good use of your time, please consider rating and reviewing it. You'll find a link in this episode's notes that will take you right to your apps review section. Real Windy Pierre from somewhere in the U.S. did that last week, saying always up to date with all the changes in the digital marketing universe. Thank you, Pierre.

Starting point is 00:12:36 And Tim Halloran from digital agency Aimclear tweeted saying, love the podcast. Great relevant content. Would love to hear a weekly recap edition of the lightning round. It's not a bad idea. I will certainly give that some thought. You can also tweet me corrections or advice on how to get to platinum as a healer main. I'm at Todd Maffin. Links to all my social channels are in this episode's notes.

Starting point is 00:12:57 Special thanks to Tresta for sponsoring today's episode. You can learn more about them at Tresta.com. I'm Todd Maffin. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 151: The Campaign That Ran $100 Cost-PER-COMMENT

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