Today in Digital Marketing - Get Your Google Ads Questions Answered Live

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Google Search is getting more volatile — what does that mean for your ranking? Pinterest is getting more... well, TikTok'ey... Instagram adds some welcome new metrics... WhatsApp Collections... and advice on how your PPC needs to change this quarter from a Google ads veteran.• Get a Free 14-Day Trial of the Premium Newsletter (with exclusive content, videos, links, and more) — https://b.link/pod-newsletter GET YOUR WORD OUT:• Ads as low as $20! See https://todayindigital.com/ads• Be a guest expert: https://b.link/pod-expert JOIN OUR COMMUNITY!- Slack: https://todayindigital.com/slack- Discord: https://todayindigital.com/discord- Reddit: https://todayindigital.com/reddit ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, Google Search is getting more volatile. Pinterest is getting more, well, TikTok-y.

Instagram adds some welcome new metrics. WhatsApp introduces collections and advice on how your PPC needs to change this quarter from a Google Ads veteran. It's Wednesday, October 20th, 2021. Happy National Pronouns Day, United States. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. And here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 487. And parents, this episode contains one bad word at the very end of the episode. We start with some breaking news this afternoon.

Facebook announced it will be launching its own new measurement solution soon. They're calling it PrivateLift and say it's their new privacy-aware measurement offering. Quoting the company, PrivacyLift will be available to all advertisers next year and can use conversions API gateway integrations to reduce implementation complexities and provide data controls. Additionally, we'll be extending aggregated event measurement to consider conversions from all advertiser-associated web pages in auto-redirect scenarios. For instance, when a user clicks on an ad and lands on jasper.com but later purchases through jasper.co.uk. There is a lot in their post today, and if you are that nerdy, there is a link to it in today's premium newsletter.

As we get closer to Black Friday and the holiday season, the ad markets are getting more volatile. Nowhere is that more true than with Google Ads. Luckily, we have help for you. This Friday at 12 p.m. Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern, we are recording a live episode with Jill Saskengales. Jill spent six years at Google Ads. She now has her own busy consultancy helping e-commerce vendors and brands navigate the PPC world. She will join us Friday to give us some detailed tactical advice

for improving your campaigns, and you will be able to ask questions as well. Everybody will get the episode this weekend. Premium newsletter subscribers will get a full transcript and some additional resources. But that's this Friday at 12 p.m. Pacific. That's 3 p.m. Eastern. And the URL to join us will be todayindigital.com slash live.

That's todayindigital.com slash live this Friday at 12 p.m. Pacific. Which brings us to another episode of who's copying who? Who's copying who? Today, it's Pinterest, which wants to become more than just a shopping inspiration site for choogy millennials. As part of their latest efforts on this front, Pinterest has revealed more Snapchat and TikTok-inspired features,

including vertical video feeds, $20 million in a new creator rewards fund, support for Amazon affiliates, and expanded creator tools. Pinterest will be redesigning their homepage to better highlight pins in a format similar to TikTok. When scrolling for inspiration, users can either browse through the pins or watch them by selecting the appropriate tab on the new home feed.

Another nod to TikTok includes something Pinterest is calling takes. Yes, that's similar to duets and stitches. Creators will be able to respond to each other's idea pins. That's their word for stories. No, wait, TikTok videos. Oh my god, it's getting nuts. With their own reaction, and each response will link back to the original. Pinterest does have a unique advantage in that viewers can save the pin and organize it into their Pinterest boards after viewing it. TikTok, on the other hand, lacks that kind of ability to save and organize the content that you like.

Starting today, the new Pinterest features are rolling out on iOS, Android, and the web. Data nerds rejoice. Instagram is introducing new insights about your audience. Now, businesses on Instagram have access to demographic data about all users they reach, not just those who follow or engage with your audience. Now, businesses on Instagram have access to demographic data about all users they reach, not just those who follow or engage with your content. You can find the new data in Instagram Insights

under the new Accounts Engaged and Accounts Reached metrics. Accounts Engaged features demographic data broken down by followers and non-followers. Other editions include top cities, top countries, top age range, and genders. This is especially welcome given that the engaged users metric represents only a fraction of users who saw your content. In order to make users shopping easier this holiday season, WhatsApp is bringing a new feature, well, new to WhatsApp anyway, called Collections, starting today.

Businesses can now organize items in their catalogs by categories, so customers can browse directly to what they're looking for without having to scroll through long lists. Quoting TechCrunch, For instance, restaurants can create collections featuring appetizers, entrees, and desserts, while a clothing store could add collections for men's clothes, women's clothes, shirts, pants, and more. Once shoppers have browsed collections, they can add items to their carts and send the order to the business, unquote. So yeah, this is like collections on other platforms. Watch for even more e-commerce features to be added to WhatsApp in the coming weeks as Facebook continues to ramp up e-commerce across its platforms. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots.

So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N.ca. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit?

No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. If you've ever had the desire to send a Snapchat from your lock screen, now you can do it. But there's a catch. You'll need to get the new Pixel 6 phone or Pixel 6 Pro. Snapchat explains, for the first time ever, we're making the Snapchat camera accessible directly from a phone lock screen.

By tapping the back of your phone, you can create snaps and play with lenses directly from the lock screen without having to unlock your phone, unquote. Wait, did I miss something? Did Google, like, acquire Snapchat or something? No? Checks note, they did not. What is Google's reason for bundling this function directly into the phone? Well, here's one. With Snapchat forming strong bonds with Apple on the latest AR tools and processes, it's hard not to believe there is an ulterior motive. In any case, a valuable partnership for the pair to make. With this new partnership, Snap's growing presence as a key augmented reality provider is now directly linked to the two largest mobile OS developers worldwide.

Just a small item here. If it seems like Google has been more volatile lately, you are right. SEMrush says the search ranking algorithm updates have been a little out of whack. Just how much more volatile are this year's Google search results than last year? According to SEMrush, 68% more volatile on desktop and 84% more volatile on mobile results than the previous year. By volatility here, we're talking about how much your listing or your ranking in Google search index moves up and down. If you've been on TikTok the last couple of weeks, I'm sure you've seen this or some iteration thereof.

You tried these new berries and cream Starburst? Pardon me. What kind of Starburst did you just say? Berries. Berries? Berries and what else? And cream. Oh!

Oh! Berries and cream. Berries and cream. I'm a little lad who loves berries and cream. It's an ad for the Starburst candy, but it's 14 years old. Never mind that. TikTok seems to think it's new again, which I guess it is. Maybe the lesson we can all learn from the little lad is to stop trying so hard. The team behind the original Starburst campaign says going viral deliberately is a recipe for failure.

How can you get ads more traction on TikTok? According to the head of social media at Starburst, your best bet is to put out something creative and organic. And that's it. Saying the minute you put something out to people and it's not entertaining, it feels like an ad. Other recommendations to go viral include experimentation and willingness to deal with ideas that don't immediately take off. Stop trying to crack the platform's formula. You won't get

anywhere. And trust the influencers. They know more about what your followers want than your marketing department. There's a great piece today at Marketing Dive with a deeper dive into the original campaign and its new life on TikTok. A report this morning say Facebook is planning to change its name. Not its app name, but its corporate name. Sort of like how Google's parent company stopped being Google, started being Alphabet six years ago. There's no word on what the new name will be, though apparently it could be announced as soon as the end of this month.

Well, never mind, Zuckerberg. We are here to help. We asked people in our Slack community this morning what they think it should be named. Greg Tirico, who owns a digital agency in the U.S., says, Didn't it seem ridiculous when Snapchat changed their corporate name to Snap? My vote is on Face. Not terribly creative, but within the realm of possibility, unquote. E-commerce consultant Ian Hayes suggests FacePalm. Digital marketing specialist Fraser Black offers this,

continuing their policy of borrowing from other platforms, SnapTik interest. My favorite was from Louise Crook. She thinks the new name should be ClusterZuck. That was just a few of the suggestions. Nearly 700 digital marketers just like you are in our Slack community. Tap the link in this episode's notes to join free or go to todayindigital.com slash Slack.

As I have mentioned before, we are transitioning it to a paid membership soon. So get in now while it's free and you will be grandfathered in for life. That's todayindigital.com slash slack or tap the link in the episode notes. While we're on Facebook for a moment, some people are reporting that they're no longer able to run feed post ads in the 4x5 dimension. In other words, kind of one of those tall Instagram posts. And they can only see square, horizontal, 1.91 by one format. Boy, we need a name for that. And what Facebook calls original, which they often end up cropping. It's not clear whether this is a new policy, or a bug, or a test, or Zuck got drunk on the gin again, or somebody leaned up against the fuck everybody lever. My money's on the ladder again? Or somebody leaned up against the fuck everybody lever?

My money's on the ladder. Also, I saw some people were pointing they kept getting kicked out of Facebook today with one of those we've logged you out messages. They could log back in fine, only to be kicked out a few minutes later. So if that's happening to you, you are not the only one. Incidentally, Facebook has a name for this bug. It's called Wednesday. Briefly, another quick plug for our upcoming live episode this Friday at 12 p.m. Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern. Jill Sasking-Gales,

formerly of Google, will join us to answer your questions about running Google ads during the holiday season. I cannot stress this enough. The people who attended the last session that we did with Jill, what, two or three months ago or so, thought that it was incredible value. And Jill has all the real world tactical stuff. This is not going to be advice like you should run different creative, you know, the kind of usual BS advice. I mean, anyone can pick up an ads account, but this is nuts and bolts in the trenches stuff. If you run any Google ads, you should be there. So Friday, this Friday at 12 p.m. Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern.

I think that's 8 p.m. London time. The URL will be todayindigital.com slash live this Friday, 12 p.m. Pacific. Talk to you tomorrow. Anyone can pick a pocket top. Anyone can be a superstar. Berries and cream, berries and cream. I'm a little out of love, berries and cream. Anyone can shake a tambourine. Thank you.