Today in Digital Marketing - The Secret of the "Micro-Yes"

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, the case for adding more steps to your web form. at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Will Performance Max one day be the only campaign type Google offers? And on the Premium Podcast, with more stories, no ads, and exclusive Deep Dive Weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes. If in-app purchases are all the rage, why are consumers avoiding it? It's Thursday, January 27th, 2022. Happy St. Sava's Day, Serbia. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 549. We're always told that the more steps a consumer has to take, the fewer of them convert.

Starting point is 00:01:19 That's true almost everywhere. Studies have found that each field you add to a form can take your conversion rate down by about 10%. Put four unnecessary fields there, you've lost 40% of your leads. But one e-commerce consultant says there is an exception, one that sent his newsletter opt-ins from 3% to 9% with just one change. Jacob Sappington is a partner at the Homestead Agency in Wisconsin. He joins me now. Hi, Jacob. Hey, Todd. How's it going? Good. So you tweeted about this this morning. Before you tell us what you did,

Starting point is 00:01:48 can you walk us through the foundational theory underlying this, something you call the micro yes? Yeah. So if you've ever studied sales at all, you know that salespeople are looking just to get any small yes out of you. And maybe if you're a life insurance salesperson, you say, you know, do you want your spouse to have the mortgage taken care of? And if something ever happens to you, and they're lining you up with these small yeses, that it almost seems that you would almost be stupid to say no to. And so by getting you into the pattern of saying yes, you're more than likely to say yes to the ultimate ask, which in our case is an email opt-in form. And so what did you change?

Starting point is 00:02:25 So instead of going straight into the offer, instead of saying, hey, we've got a 10% offer for you here, or we're giving this away, it says, would you like this offer? Simple yes, no, no, there's not a field there already. You click yes, it goes to the next page, which is then just what you're used to seeing when you go onto an e-commerce site. Here's this for 10% off. Enter your email here and you can get this offer. And so the only thing that changes is the first page says yes or no. Yes continues to the normal step of the form. No closes out the form. So it's just a little bit more of asking the customer if they want

Starting point is 00:03:00 something before assuming that they actually want it. It's so counterintuitive feeling because to me, the way you describe it is that's an extra step you've now inserted before I get their email address. Yeah, correct. And yeah, very cognizant of that. And honestly, I've tested this on numerous brands and I've never seen it decrease conversion rate. And in this case, you know, over close to three X in it, I usually see at least a

Starting point is 00:03:26 two to 3% gain to two to 3%. Like, like, if it's 8%, now, maybe it's 10 to 11%. But in this case, it's three X of what they were currently doing. Wow, Jacob, what's your Twitter account? At J Sappington, S-A-P-P-I-N-G-T-O-N. The letter J or J-A-Y? The letter J. Good question. All right, Jacob, thank you so much for joining me. No problem. Jacob Tappington is partner at the Homestead Agency.

Starting point is 00:03:49 You can learn more about them at homesteadstudio.co. Fess up. You've done it before. You've looked at all your brand's reviews and you have cherry picked the five star ones to put on your site. That's called review-gating. And you're not alone. Many brands choose to only put the best reviews of their product or service on the site because, well, why wouldn't you? Here's one reason not to.

Starting point is 00:04:17 A $4.2 million fine. The American trade regulator announced yesterday that a fashion brand called Fashion Nova had agreed to pay $4.2 million for selectively omitting negative product reviews. They also promised to stop doing that. The Federal Trade Commission's complaint alleges that Fashion Nova used a third-party product review management interface to automatically post only four and five star reviews to its website and hold lower rated reviews for approval. But the FTC says hundreds of thousands of negative lower rated reviews were never approved or posted by the company from 2015 to November 2019. Quoting the announcement, deceptive review practices cheat consumers, undercut honest businesses and pollute online commerce.

Starting point is 00:05:05 Fashion Nova is being held accountable for these practices, and other firms should take note. Additionally, the FTC has released a new guide for marketers and for platforms to educate them on the principles of publishing online customer reviews. It might be worth a look, especially if you don't have $4.2 million to spare. Links are in today's premium newsletter. Woke up this morning to a nice surprise. LinkedIn today named me one of 10 rising stars of the marketing world for 2022, saying, quote, to say Todd has his finger on the pulse of marketing is an understatement, unquote. And of course, I am absolutely honored by this.

Starting point is 00:05:47 Unless I find out that this is actually all just a genius AI play and like everyone on LinkedIn got included in their own custom AI generated listicle. Who am I kidding? I'd still be happy. You can read about the other nine at b.link slash rising stars. Google has added a feature that could potentially deter customers from your business. A section called Updates from Customers appears to have been added to Google Business Profile listings in the Google Maps interface. It appears to show recent reviews from Google's local guides, which could be a problem if one of them submitted a bad review. According to at least one Twitter user, this update's not actually 100% new, it's just being noticed more. As it receives more attention,

Starting point is 00:06:40 it might be another review target that local SEOs need to keep an eye on. We have many arrows in our SEO quiver. Sitemaps, speed tests, backlinks, and so on. One of the most well-known is the disavow list, a list of webpages that have linked to you that you'd prefer not to be considered in your own Google ranking. For instance, if a spammy forum links to you, Google might think that you put that link there, and that would smack your ranking position down. So you give Google a list of pages that you'd like to disavow, and Google considers that

Starting point is 00:07:18 when ranking you. But what happens if your site is linked on a lot of spammy pages and your disavow list is getting too big? After all, there is a size maximum for the disavow file. Google search advocate John Mueller said on a recent webmasters hangout, don't sweat it. Usually, I would recommend on the one hand, trying to use the domain directive as much as possible. That saves you kind of multiple entries from the same site. And also not to focus too much on trying to clean up all links, because that's always impossible.

Starting point is 00:07:55 I would really focus on using the disavow for links, where when you look at them, you think, if someone from the WebStamp team were to look at this, they would be 100% certain that you bought them or that there was some kind of exchange happening here. But for all of these kind of random links that a website gets, and even from spammy pages or copy pages or random forum posts, those are not things that you need to put in the disavow file. 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

Starting point is 00:08:41 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

Starting point is 00:09:13 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. with third-party sellers instead of competing directly with them. Basically, these third-party sellers would let Amazon's AI determine what price those sellers' products should be sold at, taking into account seasonality, demand fluctuation, whether the moon was in Virgo or whatever else was in the algorithm. Yesterday, the state's attorney general announced that as a result of a price-fixing investigation, the e-commerce giant will pay $2.5 million, stop this seller program nationwide, and provide annual compliance updates. The lawsuit alleges Amazon restrained competition to maximize its profits off third-party sales and engaged in unlawful price-fixing. The company said the program provided another tool for third-party sellers,

Starting point is 00:10:22 kept prices low for consumers, and that it believes it was legal, but is, quote, glad to have this matter resolved. Here comes the Google shift to Performance Max campaigns, the company reminding us this week that they will automatically transition existing smart shopping campaigns into Performance Max campaigns between July and September.

Starting point is 00:10:46 Local campaigns will be transitioned between August and September. Additionally, the company will launch a one-click self-service tool in Google Ads if you'd like to transition specific smart shopping or local campaigns prior to that automatic update date. You can upgrade specific campaigns or all of them at once using the tool. The tool will roll out for shopping campaigns in April and in June for local campaigns. API migration will be available later this year. And while they're at it killing off campaign types,

Starting point is 00:11:20 Google also announced today they will end dedicated Gmail campaigns as of June 28th. This was a special type of campaign that would appear in consumer Gmail boxes, usually at the top of the email list. Affected advertisers received an email from the company informing them of this change on January 18th. The announcement might also show up at the top of your Google Ads interface. Gmail ads aren't going away. They'll just be lumped into Performance Max.

Starting point is 00:11:57 Advertisers who still rely on standalone Gmail campaigns should begin testing out other alternatives, like discovery campaigns, well before the deadline of June 28th in order to minimize performance impact. Instagram is testing more options for polls. The update will allow users to create four responses to their poll using the poll sticker for stories, doubling your response choices. Might be a small update, but this will be great for social media managers who want to drive more engagement with their stories. Previously, anyone that wanted to create a poll with more than two options would create a quiz within stories, which isn't nearly as effective because one of the answers had to be correct. You'll also be able to customize the color of the poll sticker question so your stories can look more aesthetic and on brand.

Starting point is 00:12:37 And finally today, the web hosting service Squarespace has expanded its member areas monetization platform, now allowing publishers to host and monetize video content. With the new tools, you'll be able to build a new revenue stream, sell access to your video content. And of course, the videos will be hosted directly on Squarespace. The update comes as video advertising spending continues to grow, making it critical for creators to diversify their revenue streams. According to new research, video ad spending this year will surpass half of programmatic display spending for the first time. Yes, next year, U.S. advertisers are expected to spend more on digital video ads programmatically than on linear TV.

Starting point is 00:13:19 Connected TV is fueling programmatic video ad spending. CTV will account for more than one-fifth of all programmatic video ad spending this year, along with one-tenth of all programmatic digital display ad spending. If you are enjoying the podcast, you can get even more of it. More stories in each episode, minus the ads, and deep dive weekend episodes this weekend, for instance, we are diving into the practice of brand to brand praise. That's when you shout out your competitor. Is it good for your brand? Harmful? I'll be speaking with the author of a scientific study on that very topic this Saturday.

Starting point is 00:13:58 You will only hear it if you're subscribed to the premium feed. Tap the link in the show notes or go to todayindigital.com slash premium feed. And if you'd like to comment on what you hear, have me read your tweet out. Just include it with the hashtag TIDM or leave a voicemail at todayindigital.com slash voicemail or by tapping the link in the show notes. Talk to you tomorrow. I done gone backwards, no I did it already But here I am again and I'm ready to move past it Ready to move fast, ready to reinvent it Decide what I'm really after, in it for a minute Now I feel like a master, still I got room to grow

Starting point is 00:14:35 Miles to grow, got hours of classes I was an ass before, life get rid of my antics

Today in Digital Marketing - The Secret of the "Micro-Yes"

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