This Week in Digital Marketing - August 26, 2021

Another week means more digital marketing news! We love marketing, and you love your business. We're here to help keep you're company on track with all marketing updates that are relevant to your industry and goals.

Pinterest Ads vs. Snapchat Ads
Both of these platforms have room to grow, but which one is preferred? The best answer: Whichever one is profitable. Test both of them. Don’t put social platforms against each other. Some of them work better for certain businesses  than others.

Small businesses and consumers are on different wavelengths, new survey finds
Survey data from Constant Contact indicates that “84 percent of small businesses feel confident that they know what their customers are looking for.” But the survey data shows that consumers actually disagree. Some of the top disconnects include the following marketing areas:

• ​Small businesses are relying heavily on social media to drive financial results, but consumers say that channel isn’t where they typically buy
• 47% of small businesses believe emails checking in on a customer’s well-being are the most likely type to lead to a sale
• But 40% of consumers say emails checking on their well-being don’t influence their purchasing decisions – instead, emails with a clear discount code or coupon are most likely to be opened (77%) and lead to purchase (67%)
• 35% of consumers say an issue with a small business’s website, or the inability to buy online, would discourage them from shopping with that business

Why we care: If there’s one thing we keep learning from our experts at SMX events, it’s that knowing your audience is critical (and constant testing is mandatory). We always like to claim that we’re data-driven marketers, but, to us, this data indicates that it’s something we need to continue to work on.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Google said in the year 2020, it made 4,500 updates to Google Search. These changes can be ranking changes, user interface changes and much more. By comparison, in 2019, Google made 3,200 changes to Search. Looking further back, in 2010, we covered that Google had about one change per day.

Google also launched a “fully-redesigned How Search Works website that explains the ins and outs of Search.” In the 2021 version, it “updated the site with fresh information, made it easier to navigate and bookmark sections and added links to additional resources that share how Search works and answer common questions.”

Why we care: It is nice to see Google document how many changes it makes to Search from year to year. It is also good for search marketers to review how Google Search works and do a deep dive into the language Google uses to describe how the search engine functions.

Google Ads rolling out a new campaign setup screen
Google Ads is rolling out a new ads campaign set up screen that has the steps to set up your campaigns across the left-hand rail of the screen, as opposed to the top of the screen.   This seems to be broadly rolling out now and may surprise some advertisers who have been accustomed to the older version of this screen.

Some advertisers, as you can imagine, are not a fan of this change. It made a lot of industry vets do a double-take and it slowed down their process of setting up new campaigns in Google Ads. We do suspect that advertisers will adapt quickly to this new screen, as time goes on.

Why we care: Don’t be surprised when you see this new Google Ads campaign set up screen. You may have the same reaction as many of your colleagues where it takes you longer to set up the campaigns now because you are not accustomed to where things have moved. But you will quickly learn the change and be able to crank out new campaigns in no time.

Stickers to replace ‘swipe-up’ links on Instagram
On August 30, Instagram will deprecate support for the “swipe-up” link (in Instagram Stories) in favor of a “Link Sticker,” TechCrunch reported on Monday. The Link Sticker will behave much like the poll, question and location stickers in that creators will be able to resize it, select different styles and place it anywhere on their Stories.

Why we care: This change may enable greater engagement between audiences and creators. The swipe-up link only enabled users to swipe up (or they could bounce to the next Story), but Stories with Sticker Links behave like any other Story: users can react with an emoji or send a reply.

Creators that can access swipe-up links will have access to Sticker Links. For SMBs, that may mean that they still don’t meet the follower threshold, unfortunately. However, Instagram says it’s evaluating whether to expand this feature to more accounts down the road — I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, as more accessibility to Sticker Links may have safety implications, especially if bad actors use it to promote spam or misinformation.

Contact our team today for a consultation! We can take your business to the next level with a forward-thinking, custom marketing strategy.