Today in Digital Marketing - 179: Empowering or Exploitative?

Starting point is 00:00:00 A new study on marketing webinars. Google is testing a strange addition to business search listings. Did brands go overboard when it came to their support of the Black Lives Matter movement? And Facebook will now let you advertise on its platform without a Facebook account. It's Tuesday, June 23rd. Happy Victoria Day, Estonia. I'm Todd Maffin, and here is what you missed today in Digital Marketing. Webinars for marketing purposes have gotten a bad rap in the last couple of years, and probably for good reason. They're often used by these information marketers hawking a course with all the dirty little tricks like false scarcity, hidden upsells, and the like. But there are some ethical uses, particularly in the B2B space. And

Starting point is 00:00:45 if you are one of them, some new data based on 600,000 webinars yields some findings you might be interested in. The study is from ClickMeeting, itself a webinar platform, of course. They found that despite the large scale move to mobile for most everything else online, most webinar participants, almost seven out of 10 of them, watched on a desktop computer. On average, they watched for about 53 minutes. As for the best day to host your webinar, at least in terms of highest attendance, Tuesdays. Tuesday afternoons, to be precise, between 2 and 4 p.m. These are averages, of course, and if you've been listening for a while, you know my feeling on big studies with wide averages.

Starting point is 00:01:26 So, you know, measure your own data. Don't rely on other people's data. But if you're looking for a starting point, maybe that helps. Can't say I saw this coming, but Facebook announced today that brands that want to market themselves on Instagram will no longer need an associated Facebook account to do that. And that's a surprise, at least to me. Ever since Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram eight years ago for a billion dollars, what seemed like a ton of money then, but we all now realize was perhaps the biggest bargain in the history of tech deals. Ever since then, Facebook has integrated Instagram deeply into its platform. So far, it seems to be restricted to essentially boosting posts by giving an Instagram post a budget in the mobile app itself.

Starting point is 00:02:12 And this whole no Facebook thing is only for new advertisers and only for those in the US and Turkey for now. I suspect for most brands, this probably won't be much of a thing. I'm guessing most of you who run Instagram ads actually do them as part of a broader Facebook campaign, and Instagram is just part of the mix. But it is interesting that they're willing to let ads get set up seemingly outside of a Facebook ad account. When the Black Lives Matter movement was getting more prominent in the U.S. the last couple of weeks, many brands moved to position themselves as allies in the cause, running ads encouraging action or just virtue signaling that they are also in the battle. But now some analysts are looking at whether those ads came off as empowering or exploitative. A recent study from Ace Metrics found that TV and digital video ads

Starting point is 00:03:07 from both McDonald's and Procter & Gamble were in the danger zone of being viewed as just another brand trying to jump onto a trend. That McDonald's ad, for its part, was sparse, no audio, just a list of names of recent black victims of violence, including George Floyd. Then phrases show up like, he was one of us, she was one of violence, including George Floyd. Then phrases show up like he was one of us, she was one of us, they were all one of us, and then some messaging about how it sees its customers and employees in these victims. But that ad got the highest exploit score from consumers that thought the timing of the ad was insincere. It's definitely a tough one

Starting point is 00:03:43 for us marketers. Of course, you want to weigh in and signal your support for just causes. But it does make one wonder, why did it take mass protests and international media attention for McDonald's and other brands to jump in? Didn't Black Lives Matter before George Floyd was killed? Where were your ads about systemic racism then? If the code in this app does indeed launch, it would show a 3D visual of your product to shoppers. This is especially good, of course, in the furniture categories, appliances, apparel, and so on. Also found buried in the app, a dark mode and a Google Lens shortcut in the search bar. So your customers could aim their phone's camera at something and it would find your products just like that in Google's catalog. Still with Google for a second, it looks like they are testing a neat little addition to business search results. Some people on desktop reporting that they are

Starting point is 00:04:52 seeing restaurant listings with a new line showing a nearby business. So for instance, the result for Wing House has the text near Twisted For fork restaurant in its listing. It seems like how it's deciding what other businesses to put there is based on past location history of the person who's browsing. So you'd see a reference for a nearby business of one that you visited before. I guess you couldn't quickly orient yourself. Oh, it's by twisted fork. I know that neighborhood. I don't know how much I'd want that if I were a restaurant marketer. To me, it's by Twisted Fork. I know that neighborhood. I don't know how much I'd want that if I were a restaurant marketer. To me, it reads a little bit like, hey, don't go to this restaurant that you searched for. There's another that's close by that you've already been to. Why

Starting point is 00:05:34 not just go there? I don't know. As you can see, I am a little conspiracy theory today. I'm not really quite sure why. I did switch to decaf this week and let's just say it's not going well. A couple of small things to report. So let us take a visit to the lightning round. Google is adding a new course called Growing Offline Sales. It'll launch in a week. They say you'll learn best practices for relaunching your local marketing and reconnecting with customers. Facebook has revamped its live video dashboard. There's stronger comment moderation, the ability to create on-demand clips, and this is quite cool, overlays. That's things like lower thirds and graphics on the screen.

Starting point is 00:06:18 Previously, you needed a separate app like OBS to pump those in. You should have this now, by the way. It'll be at facebook.com slash live slash producer. Thank you. So if you're seeing changes to your web traffic, that could be why. Finally, don't forget, I am giving away a free lifetime subscription to Crello. Crello is basically like Canva. It comes with a half million stock images, 32,000 videos and animations you can drop into your project, like an Instagram story for your brand or a short video for your client or a new cover image for your Facebook page. And the plan I am giving away is lifetime access for you and two team members. To enter, click the link in this episode's description. It will take you to a pre-filled

Starting point is 00:07:11 tweet that, of course, promotes this podcast. Tweet it and you're entered. I will announce the winner on Thursday. Well, if you found this podcast through one of those recommended for you listings, that happened because people rated and reviewed the show. If you're getting value from this daily Thank you.

Today in Digital Marketing - 179: Empowering or Exploitative?

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