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Good morning, Marketers, and have you heard of the Nugget couch?
If you’re a parent of young kids or know one, you might have. It’s essentially sets of ridiculously expensive foldable and different-shaped cushions that you can build into all kinds of forts and couches and play areas. Not only can you make it a rocket ship and a reading area and a tent, but it’s easy to move around your house, kids’ room, or playroom.
My spouse told me that initially, marketing for the Nugget was targeted toward college students, and I can totally see it. Residence halls have minimal space and a fold-up couch that can be used for lounging, studying, or watching movies should do well, right? But the price point likely wasn’t a match for that particular target audience. Plus, “the college market was too limiting—most sales happen in a single month of the year,” said Laura Baverman for WRAL TechWire. They definitely got their younger target market right because they are regularly sold out or have long order times.
Sometimes we leave the market research to the branding folks, but this example really highlights how getting it right can affect ALL areas of marketing — and how the research we do in SEO and PPC can contribute to that overall positioning. I like to tell SEO noobs that search marketing should be the foundation of your marketing ecosystem. We can tell you who’s searching what and what that means for your business. So next time your organization is considering positioning for a product or service, use your search research and see what others might be missing.
Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content
Facebook changes business options in reaction to iOS updates
If you’re a social media marketer, you may know that Facebook isn’t a fan of Apple’s recent privacy changes. The social media giant recently announced some updates and new features to help business owners advertise on the platform in light of the loss of data from Apple.
“The social networking giant has repeatedly argued that Apple’s changes would impact small businesses that relied on Facebook ads to reach their customers. But it was not successful in getting any of Apple’s changes halted. Instead, the market is shifting to a new era focused more on user privacy, where personalization and targeting are more of an opt-in experience,” said Sarah Perez for TechCrunch. New features include the following:
- Expanded click-to-chat options from ads.
- Start a WhatsApp chat from an Instagram profile.
- Lead generation directly from Instagram.
- File Manager to allow businesses to manage content within Facebook Business Suite.
- New post testing options.
Why we care: Facebook is expanding its advertising options, trying to make its Business Suite easier for businesses of all sizes to use, and developing other ways for businesses and customers to connect.
Shopify partners with Yahoo ad services for ecomm SMBs
Last week, Yahoo announced a new partnership with Shopify, linking the ecommerce platform’s SMB merchants with Yahoo’s premium environments, including Yahoo Finance and AOL.
Through this partnership, Shopify merchants gain access to the Yahoo ConnectID, which has been integrated by over 3,000 publisher domains, including Cafe Media and Newsweek. Using Yahoo ConnectID, merchants can feed the most relevant products to their customers who are engaging with content on those publishers.
Merchants will also have access to Yahoo’s Dynamic Product Ads, managing Yahoo ad campaigns directly within their Shopify admin, where they can also set up and monitor campaigns in near real-time.
Why we care: According to Yahoo, before this partnership, Yahoo ConnectID had over 200 advertisers and agencies using it. With the Shopify partnership, many smaller merchants will potentially be taking advantage of affordable campaigns that use this premium inventory.
Shopify’s recent partnership with Roku achieves a similar upgrade to SMB ad campaigns. Data and identity technology are enabling smaller-scale advertisers to achieve relevant campaigns on premium streaming and online news experiences.
On the hunt for something new? Check out the latest jobs in search marketing
SEO Manager @ Weston Distance Learning (Fort Collins, CO)
Salary: $90k-120k/yr
- Develop, implement and optimize SEO strategies including link building, mining data for keyword and content creation opportunities using data to support strategy.
- Conduct website optimization of meta tags, title tags, keywords, speed, etc. to include all on-page SEO strategies.
Head of Content Marketing @ ContentHarmony (anywhere remote, overlap with US workday hours)
Salary: $60k-80k/yr
- Writing content, writing emails, producing podcast/video programs.
- Building and maintaining our email marketing efforts, and other promotion work like assisting with ad campaigns and messaging for search/social/retargeting, etc.
Senior Product Marketing Specialist @ Verblio Accelerator
Salary: $85k-105k/yr
- Conducting, gathering, and synthesizing market and customer research and customer data to identify opportunities for growth and devise an actionable strategy to capture this growth.
- Constructing, maintaining, and communicating a continuously prioritized list of opportunities to assess and their status.
Paid Search Manager @ Heart + Paw (Greater Philadelphia, remote)
Salary: $65k-70k/yr
- Plan and execute paid media campaigns in search, social, streaming, etc., in collaboration with key stakeholders.
- Bring data-driven approach, defining and delivering core KPIs through robust insight and measurement platforms.
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Search Shorts: Sorry not sorry, Google. Bing image search. Google and auto dealers.
Sorry Google. There are benefits to using multiple match types when using Broad Match with Smart Bidding. PPC expert Greg Finn breaks down some examples of using multiple match types in his latest piece.
Bing updates image search. “To improve the image quality in our search and multimedia products, we released the updated version (V3) of the Aesthetic model.”
Google Search features could stall traffic for auto sites. “Google seems to have rolled out automobile search features that show more detailed specifications without sourcing where it found those specs.”
What We’re Reading: When you ‘Ask app not to track,’ some iPhone apps keep snooping anyway
iPhones now have the option for users to reject app tracking with a pop-up that says, “Ask app not to track.” However, data from Lockdown Privacy indicates that “App Tracking Transparency made no difference in the total number of active third-party trackers, and had a minimal impact on the total number of third-party tracking connection attempts.”
They go further: “Detailed personal or device data was being sent to trackers in almost all cases. ATT was functionally useless in stopping third-party tracking, even when users explicitly choose ‘Ask App Not To Track’.”
As a user my first reaction is, say what?! As a marketer my reaction is, ok well where is that data going then? Some people believe Apple is working on its own ad options behind the scenes. But social media advertisers are still suffering: “The changes Apple made in iOS 14.5 … is causing tumult for advertisers who rely on Facebook to sustain their businesses. Performance marketers… are particularly struggling,” wrote Alex Kantrowitz for CNBC.
“iOS14.5 took a toll on Facebook ad campaigns for a lot of people. How are you feeling about it? What are you trying or changing as a result?” ecommerce consultant Kurt Elster asked on Twitter.
“Pretty brutal. Working on more specific offers -> LPs to test with certain interests again. I think the broad targeting and have FB find you customers easy days are done.” replied startup founder Travis Rice.
Facebook and other apps are asking advertisers to “hang in there” and their new ad features (listed above) may help, but is this just the case of Apple using the guise of privacy for their own ends?
