Today in Digital Marketing - Want More Sales? Show People This Body Part...

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Sex might sell in advertising, but what body part will get your customers to pay more?... Zuck's failed push to audio... Another streaming giant is offering your brand virtual product placement... A big marketing mistake from a beauty retailer... And why backlinks may be hurting your ranking...Go Premium! No ads, weekend editions, story links, audio chapters, better audio quality, earlier release time, and more.Get each episode as a daily email newsletter (with images, videos, and links).LIVE LISTENER HANGOUT:Join us every Wednesday at 1pm PM/4pm ET for the Happy Hour Hangout! Click here at this time: todayindigital.com/happyhour HELPFUL LINKS:ADS: Reach thousands of marketers from as low as $20 with our ad options.MORE CONTENT: Email newsletter, expert interviews, and blog posts.HANG OUT: Join our Slack communityEnjoying the Show? Tweet about us • Rate and review • Send a voicemailFOLLOW US:The Show: LinkedIn • TikTok • Reddit • FB Page • FB GroupTod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok • Twitch • InstagramRECOMMENDED:Jyll Saskin Gales — Inside Google Ads Andrew Foxwell — Foxwell Founders Membership • Scaling After iOS14 • All CoursesCheck out the steep "Podcast Perks" marketing discounts we've negotiated for youOthers — AppSumo lifetime marketing deals • Riverside.FM podcast recording siteCREDITS:Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn. Ad coordination by RedCircle. Production coordination by Sarah Guild. Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.(If the links in the show notes do not work in your podcast app, visit https://todayindigital.com )Some links in these show notes may provide us with a commission.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, sex might sell in advertising, but what body part will get your customers to pay more? Meta finally gives up on podcasting. Another streaming giant is offering your brand virtual product placement. A big marketing blunder from a beauty retailer. And why backlinks may be hurting your search ranking. It's Tuesday, May 3rd. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. We've all heard that sex sells in advertising,

but it turns out that the body part that really gets customers to convert is hands. Researchers believe the secret to unboxing videos' success may lie in triggering viewers' mirror neurons, which make them feel as if the objects in hands are their own. Images, GIFs, and VR were used to demonstrate that vicarious touch affects consumers' feelings of ownership and product valuation since it results in a felt sense of body ownership of the virtual hand.

This phenomenon is termed the vicarious haptic effect, and researchers claim the effect makes viewers value a product more psychologically and monetarily. This info coming from New Neuromarketing. However, results indicate it is not enough to show a hand in an advertisement. The hand must be touching the product. Also, the interaction must be appropriate to the object being handled, which the study refers to as diagnosticity. For example, if your brand sells yoga pants, you may want to stretch the fabric with your hands to show its elasticity or strength. Study results also suggest that the

vicarious haptic effect is strongest in people who are highly stimulated by immersive VR experiences. Data found that brands that portrayed hands in physical contact with a product increased engagement on Instagram posts, and those who viewed Vicarious Touch were also willing to pay more for the product. We reported recently that Facebook was losing interest in podcasting. Now, the company confirming that it is officially putting an end to its podcasting plans. Barely a year after it launched. This from Bloomberg.

Starting this week, Facebook will no longer allow creators to upload new shows and it will remove all podcasts from the platform on June 3rd. Facebook is also shutting down its soundbytes and audio hubs and integrating its clubhouse clone, Live Audio Rooms, into its broader Facebook Live suite. Meta says the move is part of a broader re-evaluation of Facebook's audio products, but I think we know since its pivot to audio never really took off, it's time to pull the plug. debuted virtual product placement. This, of course, in its Amazon Prime video product. The new virtual product placement open beta program will insert your brand's content into Prime Video and FreeVee original content after filming. FreeVee is what they used to call IMDB TV, as well as on Thursday Night Football, by the way. Several Amazon shows are already participating. The company has begun inserting virtual product placements into its shows to showcase brands like M&M's. As a result, M&M's tested and experienced an almost 7% increase in brand favorability and a nearly 15% increase in purchase intent.

Microsoft Advertising has announced several updates to its platform. First, it will be rolling out new auto-generated remarketing lists. The company says these new audiences are for those looking to get started with remarketing or if you're already using it and want to optimize performance. Advertisers will be able to choose from three types of lists. All visitors, that's people who visited your website in the last 30 days. All converters, which are people who've converted in the last 180 days, and smart remarketing, which is Microsoft's best guess on who is likely to convert. Next, enhancements to dynamic search ads, including support for exact auto-target URLs.

Now you can use URL equals, along with URL contains, to only focus your dynamic search ads on the landing pages you want. It has also added ad IDs to the DSA auto target report. Other updates include the ability to manage your audience ads images within Microsoft Advertising Editor. And finally, the Microsoft Audience Network will be improved with new bidding, CPM pricing and smart bidding. In today's episode of how Did This Ad Get Approved, here's a lesson on the importance of proofreading your ad partner's content and familiarizing them with your brand. The beauty retailer Ulta sent a marketing email to subscribers inviting them to, quote, come hang with Kate Spade, unquote. Kate Spade, the founder of the fashion and beauty brand, died by suicide four years ago.

Not only that, she died by hanging. Again, the headline was come hang with Kate Spade. The timing couldn't have been worse as the marketing email was sent on the second day of Mental Health Awareness Month. Ulta, of course, issued an apology via email newsletter to its subscribers that addressed its, quote, very insensitive choice of words that was truly an error that was meant to do no wrong, unquote. Adweek reports that a Kate Spade representative responded to the apology, saying that the company would, quote, never have approved this if we'd have seen it,

and that it appreciated Ulta's apology, would, quote, never have approved this if we'd have seen it and that it appreciated Ulta's apology and, quote, they've assured us something like this won't happen again. 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. Time for a small palate cleanser. And for that, we go back in time. There is a new service and supposedly it is the next big thing. It's a name you can't forget. It's called Twitter. Robert Liles is in San Jose.

So what makes Twitter so different? Dana, it's an incredibly strange thing. There's a series of questions that are generated by this. And the first is, is it possible that making a cell phone MySpace, even blogging, are slowly being eaten by this thing called a Twitter, where you're about to learn what a Twitter is, and you're also about to learn how it's slowly worming its way into a presidential campaign. It's stupid and lame and small. Yet master blogger Robert Scoble can't keep his fingertips off. It's real addictive.

And users are popping up all over the globe. SearchEngineJournal.com has a great piece up today about why link building could negatively impact your site. In its Ask an SEO series, this question was asked. I paid over $5,000 for SEO link building. At first, traffic was boosted. However, we then lost our rankings on those keywords and our traffic is gone. What happened? Unquote.

According to the piece, rankings most likely declined because Google flagged the links as unnatural. In Google's guidelines, unnatural links include bookmarked site links, low-quality directories, and forum comments with optimized links, and some other ones. When it detects them, the search engine giant will generally ignore those types of low-quality or spammy links. The piece suggests that there are some things you can do if your rankings drop because of these links. First, check for a manual action in Google Search Console. So if someone from Google has manually reviewed your website and found that it violates Google's Webmaster Guidelines, you may face a manual action. Next, remove low-quality links. If you did receive a manual action from Google for unnatural links, the best thing to do is to just remove those links.

And finally, focus on high-quality relevant links. You can do this by contacting websites that have already mentioned your brand but have not linked to your brand's website. A couple of minor Google updates to report. First, dropdowns and table tools have been added to Google Docs to help it become more of a collaborative productivity tool. If you're familiar with Airtable or maybe Notions databases, this is kind of similar, although quite limited in form. It is a dropdown tool. It lets you insert a small dropdown menu into a Google Doc with a list of customizable options to choose from. The table tools include a template

that makes it easy to add nicely formatted tables quickly to a document. And finally, Google Ads has officially rolled out the new Create Ad interface to all advertisers. It is a subtle change. No big features have been added, but you may notice some visual changes to the interface, like boxes being bigger and outlined.

Hot tub update. We're almost at the end. We're almost at the end. I was expecting that the structural engineer would have the letter to me last week. You may remember we got a verbal go ahead. We are still awaiting, I guess, I think that was like a junior engineer. So we're waiting for the senior engineer to sign off soon, soon, soon. Also, remember, we're restarting our happy hours every week. They're going to be Wednesday at one o'clock

Pacific at four o'clock Eastern time. And I think nine o'clock London time at night. Put it in your calendar with this URL today todayindigital.com slash happy hour. That'll take you right to the Google Meet. Every Wednesday, one o'clock Pacific, todayindigital.com slash happy hour. Talk to you tomorrow. Hi. Hi.

Can you go to the first story and tell me what the word at the end of the paragraph that starts with however oh how do i pronounce that word um i think it was like is it the diagnostic one yeah yeah yeah i would say diagnosticity diagnosticity like it's like diagnostics, but-icity. Okay. Diagnosticity. Got it. Thank you.

Yeah, I would think. All right. I'm using that. You're about to lose your mind. I promise, I promise it's almost over. These are some strange times. I really, really, really hope it's almost over.