This Week in Digital Marketing - January 28, 2022

From marketing automation to best practices in regards to marketing, the marketing world is constantly changing. This is where we can help. We stay on top of our industry updates to help you and your business stay ahead of your competition.

Zefr Promises Brand Safety on TikTok with New AI Offering
Brand suitability company Zefr announced it has partnered with TikTok to provide marketers with brand safety and brand suitability measurement for in-feed ads on the short-form video app.

Using a patented Cognition AI machine learning engine, this new offering aims at providing independent, video-level verification of the content on TikTok that appears side-by-side with ads, giving marketers a better handle on the context surrounding ads. Zefr offers similar brand safety capabilities for advertisers on Facebook, as well as on YouTube.

Why we care: The growth and scale of TikTok, which reached 1 billion active users in 2021, makes the platform an important channel that marketers can’t overlook. That same rapid growth also poses risks to brand safety and challenges to measurement with so many new users and content creators emerging on TikTok.

4 Key Questions to Improve Your Content 10x

1. How can I make my content better?
   
2. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
   
3. Who has the best content that you love?
   
4. What’s something you’re uncomfortable with telling us about our content?
   

What are Marketing Automation Platforms, What Do They Do, and How is the Vendor Landscape Changing?
Marketing automation is the use of software and web-based services to execute, manage and automate repetitive marketing tasks and processes to more effectively market through multiple channels (i.e., email, mobile, social media, and websites). Marketing automation focuses on the definition, scheduling, segmentation and tracking of marketing campaigns, allowing the marketing and sales organizations to nurture leads with highly personalized content aimed at attracting and retaining customers.

6 YouTube Community Building Hacks

1. Use YouTube Live to host a virtual event
   
2. Use the post section to build community
   
3. Partnerships can foster community building
   
4. Reply to comments and engage with people
   
5. Engage and do calls for engagement within your videos
   
6. Use pinned comments
   

Instagram Remains the Key Channel for Influencer Marketing Campaigns
Instagram versus TikTok: TikTok saw an explosion in numbers of users in 2020 (almost 90%). That slowed in 2021, but it still grew faster than Instagram (18.3% versus 6.2%). Around two thirds of TikTok users are under 24. Instagram saw a small increase in the percentage of users aged 25-34 last year, perhaps reflecting a defection of younger users to TikTok.

Why we care: The growth of interest in short-form video and engagement with social channels that host it (and let’s not forget YouTube with its Shorts offering) was dynamic in 2020 and it’s no surprise that it has slowed somewhat since then. But it’s here to stay and there’s value in it for everyone, from creators with relatively small but highly engaged audiences to brands that know how to deliver the right kinds of experiences.

6 Tactics to Rank Better in Google Discover

1. Use emotional titles, not clickbait
   
2. Include high-quality visuals
   
3. Understand and enhance E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, & trustworthiness) signals
   
4. Use the API to identify topics and entities that work for your brand
   
5. Refresh your evergreen content
   
6. Understand your Google Discover data
   

Snapchat Launches Augmented Reality Tool Shopping Lenses
Snapchat announced it is launching a catalog-powered tool, Shopping Lenses, adding to the augmented reality experience that is already used by social commerce shoppers more than 6 billion times per day on the social platform.

Why we care: Social media platforms are adding features to remove friction and enable interested users to purchase products in a seamless way, which improves experience for customers with high intent.

3 Ways We Can Prepare for a Cookieless Future

1. Use a CDP to gather first-party data
   
2. Implement customer segmentation by channel
   
3. Identify customers using first-party data
   

Why Organic Social Matters
Organic social is one of the best ways to communicate with customers. Not to mention, if you have a post that goes viral, your social following can grow exponentially. Everyone else is using organic social, so if you’re not, you’re not keeping up with your  competition.

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!