Today in Digital Marketing - The Blame Game: Will Your Brand Be the Supply-Chain "Bad Guy"?

Starting point is 00:00:00 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.

Starting point is 00:00:28 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, Bing's new feature might be good for shoppers, but is it good for you?

Starting point is 00:01:05 Also, do consumers blame your brand for the supply chain issues? Twitter fleets live again? Why media buyers should be less patient with underperforming interests? And, oh God, I never should have installed Farmville. It's Tuesday, November 9th, 2021. Happy World Freedom Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. And here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 501.

Starting point is 00:01:30 And briefly, tomorrow, Wednesday, November 10th, will be your last chance to complete our survey and enter yourself in the draw for one of three $100 cash prizes. I will not remind you about this tomorrow. So this is it. If you have not filled it out yet, please do so. Link is at the top of today's podcast episode notes, or you can go to todayindigital.com slash survey. All right, let's get to it. You might want to keep a closer eye on your competitors' prices if you work in e-commerce. A new update from Bing allows consumers more options to shop across multiple stores in one place.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Here's a brief look at what the new features include. First, product and price deals across multiple stores. Express Checkout is now available, but only on the Edge browser. Shoppers will be able to access top-viewed, highly-rated, or currently trending products within a category from across the web. Consumers will see sales and price drops and even deal rankings that will be classified into good, great, or epic on applicable items. A new buy now feature for Amazon products that directly adds the item to Amazon's cart. That's kind of interesting. And buyers can check if the item is available for curbside pickup. If you have not checked out the

Starting point is 00:02:45 updates from Microsoft Bing, do go to their blog post. They are working really fast at trying to move as aggressively as possible into e-commerce and they are doing a pretty good job at it. With all this talk about supply chain issues, you may have had a few dark nights of the soul, wondering if your customers will blame you for the mess. Rest easy, friends. New research shows consumers fault the government, not retailers, for supply chain issues this season. The study is from Morning Consult. However, doesn't mean you are off the hook. The National Retail Federation predicts shoppers will spend between 8.5% and 10.5% more this and next month compared to last year. And despite retailers stocking up on merchandise, the threat of product shortages remains. Quoting the survey,

Starting point is 00:03:36 Consumers blame the federal government and logistics companies for supply chain issues more than brands and stores. 56% of U.S. adults believe the federal government deserves some or a lot of the blame for the lack of items like cars, clothes, food, and electronics. More than 50% of the survey participants felt the same, though, toward logistics companies and also of people who overbuy. Out-of-stock products are blamed by 37% of the respondents. Now that we know consumers aren't blaming stores,

Starting point is 00:04:11 brands, or the weather for supply chain issues, what can you do to avoid unhappy holiday shoppers? Quoting the report again, first, establish clear expectations about product availability. Second, retailers can retain consumers through stock shortages with proactive recommendations. Third, amplify limited inventory notices on big ticket items like appliances and furnishings

Starting point is 00:04:35 to drive urgency. And fourth, prepare for last-minute shoppers. Despite widespread awareness of supply chain issues, most consumers still won't shop earlier. Half of consumers who indicate they are concerned about the stalled supply chain impacting the holidays are planning to shop earlier this year as a result, but that's only half. Other suggestions include to avoid disappointing customers. Forrester recommends that retailers include shipping times in the ads that they run on their apps and websites. And some companies, like Hershey, are just outright reducing advertising until conditions improve due to low inventory and eager consumers.

Starting point is 00:05:14 Links to all these reports, of course, in today's premium newsletter. Get a 14-day free trial at todayindigital.com slash newsletter or tap the link in the episode notes. The always insightful Andrew Foxwell has a great blog post up today with some insights on ad account audits his firm has done for clients recently. Audits often happen when a new agency takes over and tries to do a deep dive into what's been happening in the account, but an increasing number of media buyers are doing regular monthly and quarterly audits of their own accounts. His post covers everything from international spending to creative testing to why your ROAS Quoting from his piece, usually test a group of interests, either a stack or a CBO or ABO of individual interests, and aggressively kill anything not working. What does work? Keep active as long as it stays working.

Starting point is 00:06:13 If it flags before you think it needs to be turned off altogether, run new creatives to it. If a couple of rounds of new ads don't work, kill it and move on. A little tip for finding interests, go to Google Analytics, then Interests, then Affinity Categories, and try the interests that Google Analytics is showing as having led to the most revenue. I found some hidden gems that may work. It may not always work, but it's worth testing, unquote. The full blog post is definitely worth a read. It's at foxweldigital.com slash blog and look for the article titled Recent Insights from Foxwell Digital Audits. 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

Starting point is 00:07:06 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. Hey look, Fleets are back. You remember Fleets, right? Twitter's take on stories that they eventually bailed out on? Well, it appears Twitter is getting to roll out some of Fleets' visual customization and editing tools to the main platform. Users will be able to add stickers, text, crops, and other enhancements to uploaded videos and images, and then attach them to tweets. The updated tweet visuals have a new user interface that looks more streamlined and aligns with other apps' visual editing tools like Facebook and Instagram. Twitter has not officially announced the new visual editor, but they have provided some information on the new camera features, linked to that in our premium newsletter if you care.

Starting point is 00:07:56 And it's not available everywhere yet. Currently, this test is only available to a small number of users. Big Commerce just gave select merchants a big reason to advertise on TikTok. Advertisers that spend at least $300 US on ads will receive $1,000 US in ad credits from big commerce and TikTok. Quoting big commerce, By supporting merchants with low-cost, low-risk opportunities to advertise on TikTok, BigCommerce is giving them a powerful incentive to experiment with a leading channel and unleash their creative side to better reach and engage with new and existing customers and drive growth for their businesses. The program is only available to a limited number of eligible merchants in the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada. But here's how it works.

Starting point is 00:08:44 First, invited merchants will receive the UK, Australia, and Canada. But here's how it works. First, invited merchants will receive the offer through BigCommerce notifications. Two, to participate in the program, BigCommerce merchants need to install TikTok for Business app via the BigCommerce channel manager and create a new TikTok ads manager account or link to an existing one. After linking the ads Manager account to the TikTok for Business app, you'll need to complete the remainder of the setup steps and then reach the ad spend requirements within 14 days of the TikTok for Business app full setup. Then the ad credit will be automatically applied to your TikTok Ad Manager account within seven days.

Starting point is 00:09:22 The partnership also plans to expand TikTok shopping to additional markets in 2022. In case you've been sitting on the fence about these live audio apps, the OG app Clubhouse has added replay functionality that might extend your message if you choose to dip your toes into the water. According to the company, replays are an optional feature that creators can choose to toggle on or off for any public room. When replays are enabled, anyone on Clubhouse can replay the entire experience, wherever they like.

Starting point is 00:09:55 They'll get to see the same elements of a live room, like leave quietly and watch the dynamic of the stage and audience shift and evolve throughout the discussion, including PTRs, mic taps, and more. Here are some of the special features you'll find. You can now pin links to any segment. You can skip to the next speaker. You can hide yourself from the audience. And creators will have the ability to download the audio so they can edit it and use it wherever they want, as a podcast, as a TikTok video, as an embed in their article or newsletter, etc. Replays are now available on iOS and Android,

Starting point is 00:10:29 and the company says more analytics features are expected in the months ahead. And finally, some Shopify store owners found themselves at the uncomfortable end of a web server error today. Apparently, there was a bug that lasted a couple of hours. The company says it's resolved now. uncomfortable end of a web server error today. Apparently there was a bug that lasted a couple of hours. Somebody says it's resolved now. So I'm back. Thanks to Steph for filling in for me in the ferry lineup on the way back home. I downloaded Farmville.

Starting point is 00:10:58 Two things. First of all, shut up. That's not that's that's number one. Just shut the hell up. I know I'm aware that it's Farmville. OK, number one. Just shut the hell up. I know I'm aware that it's Farmville. OK, number two, if you have not ever downloaded Farmville and you are in game design at all, do this Farmville version three. This is a masterclass in in everything game design, micropayments. I mean, we all knew that it was the OG, but holy moly. Is it like, listen, I'm a 51 year old man. Okay. I have no business asking my wife to stop talking for a minute or two while

Starting point is 00:11:32 I finished feeding the cows and crossbreeding chick. This is not a conversation that should have happened. And yet it happened. I'm not proud of it. So yeah, Farmville. Gonna delete it from my phone tonight god help me talk to you tomorrow welcome to the winner's circle welcome to the winner's circle you ain't stopping nothing no matter the hurdle welcome to the winner's circle. You ain't stopping nothing no matter the hurdle. Welcome to the winner's circle.

Today in Digital Marketing - The Blame Game: Will Your Brand Be the Supply-Chain "Bad Guy"?

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