Today in Digital Marketing - You Probably Don’t Know Your LTV Metric. (But Should.)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, why is Google revealing the locations of home-based businesses? Facebook is copying yet another app. You're not the only one who doesn't know your brand's customer lifetime value. And how to get basically Canva's enterprise plan without paying a monthly fee. It's Tuesday, March 16th, 2021. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. TikTok may be getting a lot of eyeballs,

Starting point is 00:00:26 but their ads platform has been, well, about what you'd expect for a company at their stage. A little light on functionality. It could be changing soon, as some TikTok users have started to see notices in the app saying, based on your settings, you currently see general ads that aren't based on what you do on or off TikTok. Starting April 15th, your settings will change, and the ads you'll see may start to be based on what you do on TikTok.

Starting point is 00:00:55 You still have control over whether ads can be more tailored to you based on data from our advertising partners, unquote. This, of course, is great news, actually, for us digital marketers. This kind of tracking helps improve our targeting, which helps improve our campaign relevancy, which makes CPMs go down, and so on. This will be happening around the world, except for within the European Union, where GDPR is gumming things up there. Interestingly, a TikTok spokesperson also said they'll be using third-party data from some of its partners for personalization, which sounds a little out of date, given that the trend these days is to eliminate third-party data. It's possible they actually mean second-party data here, but it's really not clear, and they haven't communicated any of this to the rank-and-file advertisers yet. Either way, better targeting and better data is always a good thing. Speaking of data, do you know your average customer lifetime value?

Starting point is 00:01:52 Is that a metric you're even measuring? And if you are, how do you define lifetime? Because it's rarely the literal life of a person. Many service-based organizations use two years as the marker there. But if you don't know any of those numbers, at least rest easy knowing that you are not alone. A new study found that fewer than one in five senior marketers say their brand tracks lifetime value well enough to be useful. 17%, the actual number. And that's horrible. The research comes from the CMO Council and Deloitte. It was based on a survey and series of in-depth interviews of 150 brand leaders.

Starting point is 00:02:27 As for why they're not tracking that metric, just over half say they're not clear how to aggregate the right data. Today's premium newsletter has a link to the study and some pretty charts. So you've got a home-based business and you've given Google My Business your home address because A, Google says you have to and B, they promised to not reveal that address. So what a surprise it must have been then this morning for several people to discover that Google is, in fact, revealing their location through Street View. One person on Twitter posted an example of his home business being revealed. Seems to happen when users do a search for a specific brand name, not for the service being offered, and it's not happening all the time, only some of the time. In an interview with SERoundtable.com, a local SEO said, quote, it may also be an issue

Starting point is 00:03:16 for those who'd hidden their business address due to personal safety concerns. Over the years, I've heard from many business owners who hide their addresses due to restraining orders or local zoning laws, unquote. It's not clear if this is a bug, but apparently Google is aware of it. Facebook, still apparently unable to come up with their own ideas, is working on a clone of the paid newsletter subscription service Review. Review was recently purchased by Twitter. It competes with Substack, which we use here for the premium newsletter. Quoting Facebook's announcement today, in the coming months in the U.S., we'll introduce a new platform to empower independent writers, helping them reach new audiences and grow their businesses, unquote. Apparently, it'll integrate with Facebook brand pages, of course,

Starting point is 00:04:07 and you'll be able to build a community of readers inside a Facebook group. There was very vague mention of monetization, so presumably people will pay to get the newsletter, just like the other services. Facebook is also working on a clone of the trending audio platform Clubhouse and has been obsessed with TikTok's success. I can't count how many different attempts at replicating that they made before predictably dumping it into Instagram and calling it Reels. In the announcement, Facebook says it's doing this to, quote, support independent local journalists who are often the lone voice covering a given community, unquote. That's Facebook,

Starting point is 00:04:42 the company which literally cut an entire nation off from all journalism because they didn't want to pay news publishers for their, you know, journalism. Alright, it's not all bad Facebook news though. They announced that they will be expanding their community manager certification program globally, quoting WeRSM.com, Back in October of last year, Facebook launched the Facebook Community Manager Certification. The courses within the program were built specifically for community managers from different kinds of companies, i.e. agencies, brands, educational organizations, NGOs, etc.

Starting point is 00:05:21 They covered a range of topics like defining and establishing a community, developing community strategies and processes, making strategic content decisions for a community, engaging and moderating a community, and measuring and analyzing success, unquote. Finally, if you've listened for a while, you'll know that we are huge fans here at the agency of the lifetime deal site AppSumo. Easily half the tools that we use for our day-to-day client work, we paid once years ago and haven't paid a single monthly fee since. These are tools that everyone else is paying like 50 bucks a month or 100 bucks a month for. One of our best investments was a design tool called Stencil. It's basically Canva.

Starting point is 00:06:05 They have 5 million royalty-free photos, 3 million icons and vectors, 1,200 design templates for every possible social media and online ad use. Their unlimited plan usually costs $20 a month, and it's on par with Canva's enterprise plan, which is $40 a month. We got that, though, for a one-time purchase of 49 bucks. And we've been using it without restriction literally for years now. We've never paid a penny beyond that, no monthly fees.

Starting point is 00:06:33 It is one of the best deals that AppSumo has ever offered and they have brought it back. So if you're paying for Canva right now or a similar tool, do check out Stencil and consider grabbing that deal before they close it. And you can help support this very podcast by using our affiliate link to check it out. That's b.link slash Stencil secret. Again, b, that's the letter b, dot link slash Stencil secret.

Starting point is 00:06:59 Tomorrow, we will hear from Facebook's director of agencies. Did you even know they had one? They'll talk about ad placements and content. It'll be a clip from the podcast strategy sessions. If you'd like to listen ahead of time, you're looking for episode 19. Also, if you've got a marketing position you're looking to fill, or maybe you're looking for the next great gig, consider a classified ad right here.

Starting point is 00:07:20 Link in this episode's description. All right, talk to you tomorrow. Ooh, we're stepping into the groove. here. Link in this episode's description. Alright, talk to you tomorrow. Three dog night. What's a bad night for a tree? Two dog night. Thank you.

Today in Digital Marketing - You Probably Don’t Know Your LTV Metric. (But Should.)

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