This Week in Digital Marketing - October 29, 2021

We’ve got some big news this week! Especially when it comes to Facebook. You don’t want to miss this!

SEO: Blog Post Author is "Not" A Direct Ranking Factor
One of the common refrains we hear from Google on its search algorithm is that the content should be trustworthy. And the author of the article, if named, should have some authority on the topic. But is the name of the author an actual ranking signal? Google says, no. ​

During a video hangout with Google's John Mueller, he explained that the author of an article isn't a ranking factor. For instance — when asked if it matters if you have a recognized and authoritative doctor write or review your medical content, when it comes to Google’s E-A-T recommendations, he said no.

Quoting Mueller: There would be no "quantifiable difference" between using a doctor who is well known versus not well known in terms of SEO or ranking. Purely from an SEO point of view it probably doesn't matter either way to have a top doctor or lesser known doctor write or review the content.

Which is great and all, but in the past Google has previously recommended having doctors review your medical content and having an expert write your content. At the very least, it can't hurt.

What does “shoppable” content mean for the upcoming holiday season?
The pandemic has accelerated e-commerce and online retail. It’s a fact of life that the trends of COVID shopping have just become a way of life now. People expect to find what they need online (whether they plan to have it delivered or pick it up on location), and that reality coupled with advances in AI and VR technology mean retailers are looking to “shoppable content” to boost their online sales this holiday season.

How are platforms doing it? Mike Boland covered the top 3 for StreetFight:

• “Pinterest recently rolled out the ability for merchants to automatically create videos from the products they’ve already displayed on their accounts. This creates a slideshow that taps into the demand around videos and stories-based formats in social feeds. The videos also link directly to merchant check-out pages.” Along with this Pinterest Creators can tag brands in their pins which is a useful addition for affiliate and influencer marketers.
  
• TikTok is continuing to expand their shopping options, ads, and integrations. One example is TikTok Shopping, which “lets Shopify merchants that have a TikTok For Business account add a ‘Shopping’ tab to their TikTok profiles. That in turn lets them sync product catalogs and create mini storefronts on TikTok. So the integrations continue to expand in several directions,” said Boland.
  
• “YouTube just this week announced that it’s expanding its program for live shopping. This gives merchants a QVC-like format to stream product demonstrations. It’s rolling the whole thing out through a week-long event called ‘YouTube Holiday Stream and Shop’ starting November 15.” The move elevates YouTube to a shopping destination.
  

Shopping doesn’t just happen on e-commerce sites anymore. Social and streaming platforms are becoming retail destinations (especially as we near the holiday season) with shoppable content. Retailers will have to take advantage of the integrations to ensure they’re found across channels this shopping season.

Facebook: ‘All social media companies want teens to use their services. We are no different’
“Most young adults perceive Facebook as a place for people in their 40s and 50s,” according to a presentation by a group of Facebook data scientists to Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer. “Young adults perceive content as boring, misleading, and negative. They often have to get past irrelevant content to get to what matters.”

Marketers have felt it for some time but now it’s all out in the open: The platform’s decline in younger users poses an existential threat (there seems to be a lot of those going around — see our story about Google and header bidding above). Teenage users of the Facebook app in the U.S. have declined 13% YoY since 2019 and are forecasted to decrease another 45% over the next two years. Additionally, adults between the ages of 20 and 30 are also expected to decrease by 4% over the same period. “Making matters worse, the younger a user was, the less on average they regularly engaged with the app,” Alex Heath wrote for The Verge.

Instagram is still popular with teens, but Facebook’s own data shows that it’s losing engagement in important markets, including the U.S., Australia and Japan. Development of “Instagram Kids,” the company’s product planned for children and a somewhat desperate attempt to regain market share amongst youths, has been halted after lawmakers denounced the initiative.

Facebook is now 17 years old, giving it a longer run than any other social media network. Unfortunately for the platform, the decline in daily users is likely to be accompanied by a decline in ad revenue as marketers look elsewhere to reach younger audiences.“Our products are still widely used by teens, but we face tough competition from the likes of Snapchat and TikTok,” Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne told The Verge, “All social media companies want teens to use their services. We are no different.”

Paid vs. Organic Social Media: How to Integrate Both into Your Strategy
An organic social media strategy nurtures your relationship with your customers or audience. It helps you:

• Establish and grow your brand’s presence where people are already spending their time
  
• Support and retain existing customers
  
• Convert new customers by showing them what you’re about
  

However, organic is often slower to reach business goals, and while it’s technically free, it takes a lot of time, experimentation and/or experience to get right.

Meanwhile, a paid social media strategy is how you connect with new customers or audience members. It helps you:

• Reach a larger number of people
  
• Target your ideal customer more precisely
  
• Hit your business goals faster
  

That said, it requires a budget, and its own form of expertise (those ads don’t monitor themselves).

In short, while organic activity is necessary for relationship-building, it’s also true that network ranking algorithms mean pay-to-play is a fact of life on social, now.

In 2022, retailers will lose half of sales on backordered items unless they compensate with experience, according to Forrester

Research company Forrester has released its 2022 consumer and customer experience predictions, highlighting pandemic-related issues and evolving consumer sentiment. Here are the most important predictions for search marketers:

• Brands stand to lose 50% of their sales on backordered items unless they compensate with customer support. Brands that can stabilize their supply chains suggest in-house alternatives to products that are out of stock and proactively message customers about shortages and expected availability are in the best position to curb customer churn.
  
• Customers will want some pandemic-era services to be part of the new normal. People may have become accustomed to services like remote health appointments, curbside pickup and senior shopping hours; removing them wholesale could be a mistake.
  
• One-fifth of retail and consumer goods firms will compromise on customer experience. Over the last few years, consumer demands, like faster fulfillment, have resulted in poor conditions for workers at companies like Amazon. Now, nearly 40% of U.S. consumers say concerns about companies’ labor practices influence their purchasing decisions.
  
• Company values will continue to be a differentiator. By July of this year, three-fifths of Fortune 500 companies had committed to climate action, up from 32% the year prior. “Brands that take a stand on more highly charged issues will cater to a small segment of hyper aware consumers with a personal connection to those values,” said Lai et al.
  

Why we care: These predictions align with what many businesses have been experiencing and how consumer sentiment has changed since the start of the pandemic. While most of the predictions aren’t directly related to SEO or PPC, they may affect reviews, ad campaigns and customer loyalty, which greatly influences strategy for search marketers.

Facebook is Meta
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the tech company is renaming itself to “Meta” to encompass its expanding technology and role in what it calls, “the metaverse.” The company owns multiple technologies and apps including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus VR. In July, Zuckerberg told The Verge that over the next several years, Facebook would “effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”

Why we care: The rebrand comes right as whistleblower revelations have Facebook under fire for its practices, morals, and social impact. It also begs the question if the metaverse will become a new frontier for advertising (especially as the Oculus has been testing ads in VR). But also, as marketers, we can’t look away from a branding fail and “Meta” just feels like one.

YouTube ads are the breakout star of Google’s Q3 earnings report
Another quarter’s earnings report shows that Google is among the winners when it comes to the shifting pandemic landscape. Revenues for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, went up a whopping 41% YoY according to the report, with ad revenues driving $51.3 out of the $65.1 billion. Google attributed the continued increases to its big push for commerce in Q3 (and before) in the earnings call. Along with the investment in commerce, Google is offering even more options for advertisers who are seeing a return to in-person shopping, especially as the holiday season nears.

YouTube is the breakout star. “YouTube advertising revenues reached $7.2bn, an increase of 43% from the previous quarter thanks to both direct response and brand advertising,” reported John Glenday for The Drum. This is the result of YouTube’s CTV (connected TV) advertising increases and its competitive product Shorts, which competes with the likes of TikTok and Snap. This increase is a big deal since Apple’s App Tracking Transparency had the potential to affect YouTube similarly to other video social media apps.

Why we care: “Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler explained on the call that while shoppers are returning to physical stores, the company’s also seeing ‘strong growth in local shopping queries’ at the same time,” said Sean Hollister for The Verge. Advertisers can expect to see the continued shift in local and omnichannel search marketing strategies, so if you’re not preparing yet, it’s something to consider for your 2022 strategy.

Any questions or concerns about these updates? Contact us for a consultation and level up your marketing strategy today!