Today in Digital Marketing - How Long Will Digital Agency Offices Stay Empty?
Episode Date: September 21, 2021Do they stay or do they go back? The question agencies are facing now.... Why you might be doing LinkedIn posts all wrong... Which platform has more staying power for consumer trends... and you might ...want to sit down for this: Facebook will be removing even more data from marketers.We're looking for an Associate Producer! Check TodayInDigital.com/job• Get a Free 7-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:- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok 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
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Today, do they stay or do they go back? The question agencies are facing now.
While you might be doing LinkedIn posts all wrong,
which platform has more staying power for consumer trends?
And you might want to sit down for this.
Facebook is removing even more data from marketers.
It's Tuesday, September 21st, 2021.
Happy Independence Day, Malta. I'm Todd Maffin
from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 472.
It's been a rough few months for marketing agencies. Besides the usual, social ad campaigns
all messed up because of Apple's restrictions, and gearing up for the holiday season, you know. But this time, it's even more difficult.
When the pandemic started, many agencies moved their teams out of the office.
Now that things are settling back into place, at least in some countries,
agencies are having to decide what to do with these people.
Do they stay a remote operation?
Does everyone come back like the old days?
Or something in the middle?
The mega-agency Publicis Group planned to return to their offices earlier this month,
but after the highly contagious Delta variant became a factor,
those plans have been backed off from.
It's not just pandemic-related reasons either.
Sometimes it's just financial.
Quoting Marketing Dive,
The Tony Manhattan office has historically been a staple of ad agencies, an association enshrined by media touchstones like Mad Men. Quoting Marketing Dive, new business. One of the key arguments in favor of preserving a physical presence is around company
culture and collaboration. But as the pandemic stretches on with no clear finish line, some are
more skeptical of how necessary an office is to achieving those goals, unquote. Yeah, I mean,
we were pretty fortunate when March happened, the beginning of the pandemic, we were six months
left in our lease. Terrence Sautel is the founder and strategy director at GOAT, a design and development agency in Vancouver.
He spoke with me earlier this afternoon.
It was a blessing and a curse in the sense that we had to make a decision quickly.
And personally, I never wanted to have a remote team.
So it was kind of a forced hand.
That being said, I'm glad it happened because it pushed us into being a little bit more lean and adapting processes to work within a remote environment. Now that everything's slowly opening back up,
conversations happen again. Funny enough, there hasn't been a lot of desire to go back to an
office. For a couple of reasons, we started hiring nationally. So we've got a project manager in
Belleville, Ontario. We've got a developer in Nova Scotia. Those staff would feel alienated,
feeling that, you know, if there was an office in Vancouver, you know, for our seven staff here,
you know, they're missing out. Much of what's making this a hard decision for the industry
is the effect a lack of an expensive lease is having on the bottom line.
Most of the big ad holding groups returned to growth this year, a handful even beating their
pre-pandemic net profits.
One expert Marketing Dive quoted in their piece today thinks the smaller shops will be more likely
to return to the office since they don't have to worry about real estate investments of multiple
locations. As for Terrence, he's made a decision for his agency. We're going to stay remote. You
know, I think selfishly I'm sad about that decision because I really relish those times where you work with your team and you're beside them.
But that being said, the team overwhelmingly was pushing to continue the way we are and
work on process. You can learn more about Terrence's agency at meetgoat.com.
Some interesting data for you B2B marketers who rely on LinkedIn to get your message out.
New research from Lightspan Digital has found that text posts without links perform better than those with links.
There is one exception to this, job posts.
Those do better with the link there.
The study analyzed the likes, comments, and shares on about 86,000
LinkedIn posts across 883 different company pages. But what about if you throw images into the post?
In that case, the average engagement rate is 70% higher for those without links. This is becoming
a truism across all social platforms. And it makes sense from their point of view if you think about
it. Why would platforms encourage you to have people leave their site?
So a few people have started putting the link as the first comment in the post.
But that's a very few. Only about one-fifth
of one percent of the posts analyzed did that.
As for what type of post will get the most engagement, on LinkedIn, that's
an image post, followed by video posts and job posts.
From business marketing to consumer marketing now, and Pinterest today releasing its latest overview of the main key trends gaining traction there.
A bit of context. This is actually tied to their Pinterest Predicts report, which came out
last December, went over 30 different trends that Pinterest thought would become bigger movements
this year based on engagement and how many people were searching for those terms. How did they do?
They got a B plus, basically, saying they got about 80% right. This is part of an effort to
promote their Pinterest Trends tool, which is very similar to Google Trends, if you know that app.
Some examples that social media today quoted on how brands have used that data, quote,
Buick created a campaign around the Little Moments of Big Love trend, based on research that people on Pinterest are celebrating even the smallest occasions,
and tapping into the insight that people were hosting movie nights under the stars. The campaign exceeded benchmarks with 74% higher video completion rate
compared to automotive industry benchmarks.
And Dawn took advantage of the rising trend,
Bland is Banned,
and launched a trend package based on the Spiced Up Recipe spike,
resulting in 24% more efficient CPMs than the household benchmark, unquote.
Pinterest says the trends that pop up on their platform have more staying power.
Quoting the company,
most trends on the internet last about six months and then fade out.
But not on Pinterest.
Here, trends sustain monthly growth more than 20% longer than trends on the rest of the internet.
In other words, they're not just a flash in the pan,
which means brands and creators who feature those trends
benefit from content with a longer lifespan, unquote.
You can check out Pinterest's Trends tool at trends.pinterest.com.
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.
Twitter has expanded its official partner program to include seven more third-party providers that can enhance your marketing efforts on the platform.
They are Black Swan, which has consumer intelligence data.
Bloomberg, which will provide what they call actionable signals in strategic analysis.
No, I have no idea what they're actually offering.
HootSuite gets access to more official tweet data tools.
Listen First is an analytics tool.
Meltwater is a media monitoring platform that now gets direct access to Twitter's data.
NetBase Quiz, an analytics and market data provider.
And TalkWalker, also a social analytics platform.
In a move that I don't think will surprise anyone who is a regular listener here,
Facebook is apparently testing removing some data that marketers have relied on.
I know, shocker, right?
The test removes your ability to see the names of people who have viewed your brand's stories. You'll only see their name if they react or comment on it. And to be fair, I don't think many brands check
this data at all. It's not in the API, so you can't find it through any third-party tools.
There's not really any marketing value to it. You can't download a list of users and use it
in targeting. Thus, this is probably less about a change to marketing data and probably more a wider approach to privacy and mental well-being, for which they should
be applauded and not mocked mercilessly by some D-list marketing podcast host.
Who put that in the script?
Google has added a nice little touch on its Gmail app on Android.
You can now filter email and search results faster.
Search filters can be used independently or post-search.
You choose from filtering options from dropdowns.
For example, you can type a query and further narrow results by selecting search filters like from, colleague's name, or a specific time frame. This has started to roll out to the Android mobile app now
and should be to you folks by the end of next month at the latest.
And finally, potheads rejoice.
Amazon says it has reinstated employment eligibility for you.
The company says former employees and applicants that were penalized
for failing marijuana screenings can now be considered for you. The company says former employees and applicants that were penalized for failing marijuana screenings
can now be considered for jobs.
Cannabis is legal
everywhere in Canada. In the US
it's a little more complicated. It's legal
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The federal government there still considers it
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But apparently it opens the door to a whole lot of people. More
than you think. Inside Ecommerce today reported that Amazon believes
this will boost applications by
400%.
Christina works in a boutique digital agency in Vancouver.
Louisa is in Qatar about to start a marketing role with a government organization.
Ian is a marketing specialist at an apparel brand in the U.S. Midwest.
Kyle works at a crisis PR firm in Washington, D.C.
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So
Dumb it down