This Week in Digital Marketing - April 22, 2022

This week in digital marketing, we've covered breadcrumb navigation, the best times to engage on social media, and why we care about customer trust.

3 Challenges of Building Customer Trust in a Privacy-Focused World
Building customer trust is vital to the success of any brand. Here's how we can increase trust without sacrificing something just as important -- privacy.

1. Fostering a customer community
   
2. Asking customers to trust you with their data
   
3. Communicating with customers throughout the lifecycle
   

Why We Care: Knowing your ideal customer is crucial to the most successful digital marketing techniques. It's critical to know what they're interested in, what they've purchased previously, and even what demographic category they belong to.

Breadcrumb SEO Best Practices for a Mobile-First Strategy
What is breadcrumb navigation, and how does it work?
Breadcrumbs navigation is a set of contextual links that show the user where they are on a page. They're a type of supplementary navigation that lets users track their progress through the site hierarchy.

When should breadcrumbs be used?
Breadcrumbs aren't necessary for all websites. They're not required for sites that:

• Don't have a lot of nested navigation levels.
  
• There is no logical grouping or hierarchy.
  
• Are intended to be linear adventures.
  

SEO benefits of breadcrumb navigation and structured data

1. More crawling
   
2. Better indexing
   
3. Higher ranking, SERP clicks and organic sessions
   

For hierarchically complicated sites, breadcrumbs are a vital type of secondary navigation. They help with navigation, usability, and removing pogo-sticking from Google SERPs.

It also helps with SEO by making crawling easier, contextualizing information for indexing, and generating internal link equity. The full potential of breadcrumbs will be demonstrated using classic design with a mobile-first twist of the complete breadcrumb trail fitting on a single line owing to CSS overflow.

The Best Times to Engage on Social Media
When is the greatest time to engage? The four platforms investigated have certain similarities. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings are the best for engagement across all of them; Sunday mornings, are the lowest.

Facebook: The best days are Tuesday through Friday, and Saturday is the worst. On the surface, it is strange that the optimum time to engage on a weekday is 3 a.m. (CST), but this represents Facebook's global reach.

Instagram: The best time to post is in the middle of the day, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on weekdays; avoid Sunday.

LinkedIn: The same is true for LinkedIn, with the best times being mid-mornings and mid-week.

Twitter: Because people check their tweets first thing in the morning, Twitter's peak hour is 9 a.m. on weekdays.

5 Ways to Level Up Lazy Listicles

1. Choose novel selection criteria
   
2. Persuade the reader by surfacing your thought process
   
3. Share personal experience to demonstrate credibility
   
4. Lean on the experience of others when person experience is impossible
   
5. Make a single, opinionated recommendation
   

Consumers Aren’t So Worried About Data Misuse by Advertisers
Consumers are concerned about their data being misused, but the misuse they are concerned about is criminal, not commercial.

While customers appear to accept that others will have or obtain personal data, they are nonetheless doing everything they can to combat this. Only 20% believe they have control over their information, and 52% say there is no such thing as internet privacy. Despite this, nine out of ten people have taken steps to protect their privacy, with more than half clearing browser cookies and turning off location monitoring on mobile devices.

Why We Care: Consumer perception on data privacy is nuanced, which presents marketers with an opportunity. Consumers are also unimpressed, despite the fact that "tailored customer experience" is essentially marketing gospel. While a tailored CX aids in the sale of goods, it offers no major value to customers. To persuade consumers to provide personal information, it will have to do so.

Digital Marketing Snippets

• Google Ads’ Performance Max will mix and match your creative, keywords, etc. to find the best performing ad combinations for your content.
  
• Real-time data may appear lower in Google Analytics’ UA, and Google urges users to switch to Google Analytics 4.
  
• When you're trying to succeed on YouTube, you need to find your niche.
  
• Netflix is considering a low-cost version of their membership that is ad-supported.
  
• TikTok has announced new, interactive ad options.
  
• Microsoft will be expanding their video game advertising.
  
• Instagram does not want you to reshare/repost content from TikTok. Make sure it’s not branded, so don’t edit your videos in TikTok and post to Instagram.
  

Some of this information is relevant to your business, and some of it might not be. This is where we can help. We’re able to break down these updates and figure out which ones are most important for you and your business. Contact us for a consultation!