Today in Digital Marketing - Are Shipping Services On The Verge of Collapse?

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, don't be surprised if the delivery company Be protected. Be Zen. And what do you do when you have a loyalty program of 100 million people? Why, you start an ad platform, of course. It's Thursday, December 3rd, 2020. Happy National Secretary Day, Chile. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. An interesting milestone was passed this year, the media agency Group M said this week it expects digital ads will make up more than half of total media spending for the first time ever. Despite the pandemic, or perhaps because

Starting point is 00:01:13 of it, spending on digital will grow by 5% this year. It expects next year we'll see an 18% jump, which would bring digital to 54% of the total spend. This is a more optimistic outlook than its earlier forecast this year. The companies most likely to benefit from this increased spending? No surprise, Google, Facebook, and can you guess the third? Amazon. Together, they hold two-thirds of the U.S. digital ad market. Amazon, in particular, of course, benefited from COVID. Ad revenue there

Starting point is 00:01:45 jumped more than 50% in Q3 compared to the previous year's Q3. In the same period, Facebook was up 22%. And that's even with that big ad boycott back in June. Remember that? Google's revenue rose just under 10%. Heads up if you're an e-commerce brand that relies on delivery services to get your customers orders to them ups is just straight up blocking some retailers from using their services and we're not talking about the little guys either we're talking the gap and nike among others ups has imposed shipping restrictions on those two and others, perhaps a sign that the holiday buying season is stretching delivery networks to their limits. Quoting the Wall Street Journal, The delivery giant on Cyber Monday notified drivers across the U.S. to stop picking up packages at six retailers including L.L. Bean, Hot Topic, Newegg, and Macy's, according to an internal message viewed by

Starting point is 00:02:46 the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by UPS workers in different regions. No exceptions, the message said. The move comes during a holiday season when retailers are increasingly dependent on delivery companies to move online orders as store traffic has plummeted during the coronavirus pandemic, a dynamic that has shifted power significantly. UPS and rival FedEx have raised prices and promised to hold merchants to volume agreements, unquote. Yikes.

Starting point is 00:03:18 The National Retail Federation says online shopping jumped 44% over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period. A spokesperson for UPS says they'll be happy to pick up those packages that they left, but only when capacity becomes more available. I say it again. Yikes. I had an interesting long read this morning come across my desk from the blog of a private investigation company called Martin PI. They had wanted to get on some podcasts, and so they tried working with a number of these podcast booking agencies. These are companies that promise to get you on podcasts as a guest, and then you pay them for that guest booking. Side note here, by the way, if you are with one of these agencies, stop sending me guest requests.

Starting point is 00:04:06 It's amazing these cold email scripts they send. Now, I'm a big fan of your podcast. I listen all the time. Can you interview our client on your show? I mean, if you actually listen, you'll know I don't do interviews like almost ever. Anyway, some good takeaways from their experience, quoting their blog post, all 10 agencies will negotiate their fees. The average cost for them getting you on a show was approximately $350. Don't ever pay this amount or close to that amount. Most have a silly setup fee, which averages $750. Never ever pay this fee. They will waive it for you. And don't pay the mandatory one sheet, which supposedly needs to be developed. This is another gimmick to generate income. There are numerous samples on the internet and you

Starting point is 00:04:49 can complete yours in one hour. The agency should do this for you as a courtesy, unquote. One podcast booking company apparently tried to charge them 500 bucks just to get on the phone and talk about their services. Again, quoting their post, we ended up retaining what we thought was the number one agency on the list. We would get four interviews each month for three months at a cost of $1,500 per month. We provided our credit card for the first month payment

Starting point is 00:05:17 beginning on February 1st. On March 1st, we spoke with the principal and expressed our concern for no interviews to date. He advised there were numerous interviews in the works. He even asked me on this call if he could access my card for the second credit card payment. I think you know the answer, unquote. Anyway, after more than two months passed with no interviews, the agency then got a call from them to say, you know, listen, you got to refund us.

Starting point is 00:05:42 That's suddenly when the agency came up with two podcast interviews for them. One never went through because the host couldn't get his technical stuff sorted out. And the other had really, really, really low audience numbers. So if you've thought of using these agencies to get some attention for yourself or for your brand, buyer beware. and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. Facebook has added some new features to its automotive promotion tool set. First, a new manage inventory tab on dealership pages.

Starting point is 00:06:36 So now you can create, manage, and promote the vehicle listings in one place. You can also create ads that promote that inventory in just a few clicks. They've even added a pre-filled template. And you can now showcase new and used vehicle inventory on your dealership page. This is organic, not an ad product. There's a new page tab for this called vehicles and will show up if you indicate you're a car dealership. Yes, that was an earthquake you felt today, at least if you were standing on the Google search engine.

Starting point is 00:07:06 The company confirming this morning it has started to roll out a new core update. Google actually updates its search algorithms an average of six times a day. But those are little tiny tweaks. These big algo changes happen maybe two or three times a year. The last one was in early May. So maybe on Monday or Tuesday of next week, check your brand's own findability in a private browser window, or better yet, use an SEO tool. You may have gone up, you may have stayed the same,

Starting point is 00:07:34 or you may have dropped lower. Google says, it happens. Quoting their documentation, one way to think of how a core update operates is to imagine that you made the list of the top 100 movies in 2015. A few years later, in 2019, you refresh the list.

Starting point is 00:07:52 It's naturally going to change. Some new and wonderful movies that never existed before will now be candidates for inclusion. You might also reassess some films and realize they deserved a higher place on the list than they had before. Pages that drop after a core update don't have anything wrong to fix. This said, we understand those who do less well after a core update change

Starting point is 00:08:12 may still feel the need to do something. We suggest focusing on ensuring you're offering the best content you can. That's what our algorithms seek to reward. Another big retailer has launched its ad platform, Walgreens this time. Walgreens is an American pharmacy chain. It's called the Walgreens Advertising Group. Yes, WAG. And lets you buy space on in-store digital displays, their social media platform, streaming audio, even email channels. Walgreens has 9,000 stores and a loyalty program with more than 100 million members. And just last month, the company launched a new loyalty offering that includes same-day pickup and integration with delivery services like Postmates and DoorDash.

Starting point is 00:09:00 Walgreens' big competitor is called CVS. They, too, are rolling out their own media network. Why the urgency? I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Amazon last month introduced a dedicated pharmacy business called Amazon Pharmacy. A couple of tiny things to wrap up. That issue I told you about yesterday about Facebook's problems with replying to private messages in third-party tools, they fixed it, and then all the developers at those tools were like, wait, wait, no you haven't.

Starting point is 00:09:34 It's still happening. So this morning, Facebook reopened that ticket where it remains open as I speak. So if you're having problems with private messages in your third-party tool of choice, that's why. There are rumors floating around that the Wondery Podcast Network will have a new owner soon, and talk on the street says that owner might be Amazon. Apparently, they're using 300 million bucks as the valuation. And also apparently, both Apple and Sony looked into buying them last month. And finally, if you've got a few million bucks still kicking around in your media budget,

Starting point is 00:10:06 CBS says better move fast because they've already sold about 75 to 80 percent of their Super Bowl inventory. There are only about 8 to 10 spots left to sell. I've been playing around this week with a couple of tools out there trying to get our agency stuff more organized. Like a lot of agencies, I guess. We use a bunch of tools, right? We've got Airtable for our stock media licenses. Nuclino for our engagement and moderation cheat sheets. Notion for our client call logging.

Starting point is 00:10:38 Hell, all our ad plans and contest plans are still just a bunch of semi-organized Google Docs. So I've been going back and forth between like Notion and Airtable. Notion doesn't seem to have forms that let you input data easily. And also this surprised the hell out of me, doesn't seem to let you export your data as CSV, which is weird, right? Am I missing something there? Airtable's cool, but they have some data restrictions that Notion doesn't have, even on their paid plans. I don't know. We've been in business more than 10 years. I figure we probably need something more essential.

Starting point is 00:11:15 But trying to find that perfect app, you know, one with exactly what we need, I know it's never going to happen. Anyway, that's it for today. Talk to you tomorrow. We were good friends. Called each other on weekends. Complicated with feelings. Ended up how it always ends With no longer being good friends We were good friends

Starting point is 00:11:35 Called each other every weekend

Today in Digital Marketing - Are Shipping Services On The Verge of Collapse?

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