The Daily Carnage

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4 Reasons to Use Cookieless Targeting Strategies

AUGUST 10, 2022

While Google has pushed the official deadline for the full ban of third-party cookies to 2024, the restrictions on third-party data collection are still growing. That means marketers are going to need to turn to cookiless alternatives.

Cookieless targeting offers marketers an opportunity to experiment and innovate their targeting strategies. By adding this strategy to their marketing mix now, they can adapt to the upcoming changes.

The Benefits of Cookieless Targeting

It Reaches Users in the Right Frame of Mind: When a person is browsing content about a specific topic, it signals their intent at that moment. With cookieless targeting, you can reach them in that moment.
It Helps You Target Niche Audiences: It provides the opportunity for marketers to target niche contexts by specifying a topic or a collection of keywords. That way, your ads are served to consumers who are receptive to the niche attributes of a product or service.
It Provides Real-Time Metrics: Since contextual advertising campaigns are served programmatically, you can review real-time metrics and optimize for maximum performance. Optimizing your campaigns in real-time strengthens your live campaign’s performance which ultimately improves the outcome and reduces dollar waste.
It’s Brand Safe and Builds Brand Affinity: Consumers are increasingly conscious of the environments where brands choose to advertise. Contextual advertising addresses the need for brand safe advertising while also building brand affinity, by leveraging content rather than user data to reach the right audience.

Check out the full article by Stack Adapt for more tips on contextual advertising, other uses for cookies, and paid advertising tools.

How to Convince an Old-Fashioned Team to Embrace Modern Marketing

AUGUST 8, 2022

How can you persuade hesitant stakeholders to embrace modern marketing, such as TikTok or influencer marketing? Well, as a marketer, you know how to research an audience and understand how to speak their language. That’s the same approach you need to take here. Every situation is unique, but here are some principles to help:

Observe, ask Qs, and listen. The credibility of your advice suffers in the absence of empathetic listening. Get to the bottom of the objectives already at play, and the perceived risks of new methods.
Help them understand media consumption. Someone with an old-fashioned approach to marketing often has an old-fashioned approach to media consumption. Since many wrongly assume that everyone consumes media the way that they do, you have to demonstrate different consumer behaviors.
Reason by analogy. Analogies are the bridge between what a person already knows and what they need to know. To give you a shared point of reference to start from, educate yourself about their current methods and marketing vocabulary.
Be prepared to provide proof. What’s new seems risky until proven otherwise. Gather hard data regarding the media consumption of their target audience, surveys from their own audience, visuals like slide decks, or anecdotal customer success stories.
Build confidence in the team and process. Effective leaders know they don’t need to understand every nuance of a new platform if they know a team implementing it can get results. Build trust by demonstrating expertise from team members.
Help them learn from past success. Help stakeholders connect the dots from the success that came from adapting in the past to the success that can result from adapting in the present. The pandemic especially has been a lesson in the need to adapt.
Connect them with helpful resources. The internet is an endless resource of video, audio, and written content. Point them in the direction of accurate information that will demystify modern marketing methods.

Check out the full post from Carney’s blog to equip yourself with all of the right questions and approaches. Need help to back up your efforts? Hit up the Carney team to discuss your upcoming projects and goals.

Geolocation Marketing to Know: Geofencing vs. Geotargeting

AUGUST 7, 2022

Location-based marketing is great for targeting your best, local audience or serving more relevant ads to groups in different areas. The main ways to go about it are geofencing and geotargeting, but they differ in a couple ways.

Geofencing:

Geofencing refers to drawing a virtual barrier around a location using users’ IP addresses. This technology allows marketers to digitally “fence-in” a specific geographical area so that their display advertising is directed toward that group only. Geofencing meets users where they are so that makes for a higher chance of conversion.

Geotargeting:

Geotargeting refers to delivering ads to site visitors that meet a specific targeting criteria and are inside a defined location radius. It’s also known as local PPC, a location-based form of paid marketing that focuses on a specific geographic location. With this type of targeting, you’ll ensure that only the right people see the right ads at the right time.

What’s the difference?

Geofencing is a more trigger-based solution, such as sending an email alert or showing a targeted ad on social media. Geotargeting is a good tool for when you want to hone in on a more specific set of users.

Tips for Both:

Match their language: This refers both to the form of language spoken and the type of “language” or local lingo used.
Match the messaging: To get the right message in front of the right audience at the exact right time, you might need some A/B testing. You should also create a geo-targeted landing page and a standard landing page and compare performance.
Match the vibe: Visual elements are essential. The psychology of color plays a huge role in marketing. Try different colors, photos, and content specifically for your geo-targeted audience.

Check out the full post by Smith.ai for tips and examples on using location-based marketing for leads.

How to Get People to Click Naturally (Skip the Click Bait)

AUGUST 3, 2022

In yesterday’s poll, 70% of you said that you fall for click bait.

That’s because it’s purposefully tempting! But intentionally overexaggerated headlines are not typically advised for content. You may just end up with really disappointed readers. There are levels to it, but for the most part the idea of “click bait” can be a misleading title.

Instead, here are some tips for making clickable content that isn’t a fake out:

Meet Expectations: And then possibly exceed them! Acquiring organic clicks is less about getting your readers to click something and more about having them stick around, right? By creating content that is giving people what they want without overpromising, you build audience trust. Plus, high-quality content means sharable content.
Do Your Research: You’re not going to become successful by tricking people into clicking on your links. Don’t act on trendy terms alone. If you want to be successful, you have to create well-researched content that genuinely interests people. That means understanding your audience and topics really well.
Provide Value: As a part of your research, the top priority is understanding what provides the most value to your audience. The goal is to become your audience’s new favorite resource. Ensure that your content is keyword-rich but overall provides thoughtful insights or tools.

Check out the full post by Zero Gravity Marketing for more reasons to avoid click bait (hint, hint, it could hurt your SEO). Need help writing attention-grabbing headlines that also do some research for you? Check out today’s tool down below!

The FTC’s Guides for Using Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising

AUGUST 2, 2022

Did you know there is a right and wrong way to use UGC according to the FTC? Granted, things are still a little fuzzy since it updated the terms this past May. The commission treats endorsements and testimonials the same way. While these aren’t crazy cases that could get you fined millions, you could still get flagged or receive small fines.

To avoid any of that, we wanted to break down the essentials of FTC endorsements and testimonials for marketers to know.

Watch your freebies. If a consumer receives a free product as part of a marketing program and the consumer has the option of writing a review, the consumer’s review would be classified as an endorsement but treated like a partnership that required disclosure.
Watch your UGC. If you are using multiple instances of consumer testimonials, be sure to be backing any over exaggerating claims. Consumer endorsements should be disclosed in some cases (especially on video using disclaimers like “actual customers”).
Watch your partnerships. Advertisers and endorsers (read: influencers and creators) are subject to liability for false or unsubstantiated statements made through endorsements. So be sure to work with experienced partners that know when an ad or review steps into false advertising territory.
Watch your credentials. We’ve all heard some disclaimer terms like “clinically proven” or “backed by health professionals.” Well, be sure that the endorser’s qualifications do in fact give the endorser the expertise to make any claims.
Watch your language. This is a small note for the international advertisers out there, but whatever language your ad is in, your disclosure must be in the same language.

It’s not the most exciting read, but the full guides, details, and even marketing examples can be found on Title 16 CFR pt 255 on the FTC’s website.

12 Ways to Beat Facebook Ad Fatigue

AUGUST 1, 2022

If you are serving an ad too often to your target audience, they will be tired of seeing the same ads over and over again. That’s called ad fatigue. High ad fatigue causes Facebook to severely limit your ad’s deliverability. Luckily, there are ways to avoid it.

Ways to beat ad fatigue:

Automatically pause ads with high frequency: Sometimes it’s just about taking a little break. What’s considered a “healthy frequency”? For most marketers ideal ad frequency is something between 1.01 and 2.99. When ads reach a higher frequency, you want to turn these ads off. Go to your “Automated Rules” and create a rule.
Create new audiences and ads: Pausing is great, but freshening up content is a more active approach. Update your ad creative and audiences so you are serving new looks for campaign messaging.
Automatically decrease budgets for high-frequency ads: Pausing high frequency ads will stop them from ever being served again, but what if it was a high converting ad? If your ad sets are being served to the same people too often, you can decrease their bid/budget to decrease frequency.
Exclude audiences that already engaged with you: If someone engaged with your ad or brand, it’s time to show them something new as they are less likely to interact with the exact same ad. Look to strategy #2 or create a different retargeting ad. But first, you need to separate that engaged audience.
Limit ad deliverability with a schedule (dayparting): Running ads only on certain days and at certain times is great, but a manual and strategic feature. Dayparting, or running ads on a schedule, will run your ads during the best times and days of the week instead of 24/7. This will cut down less useful impressions and decrease ad fatigue.
Use the reach campaign objective: Reach campaigns are usually used to more thoroughly reach larger audiences. The default setting is no more than two impressions every seven days, but you’re able to customize the frequency cap over a time period. The downside is this campaign type can’t be optimized for conversions well.

Check out the other 6 ways to avoid fatigue on the full post by Revealbot.

4 Ways to Disclose Advertising Content

JULY 31, 2022

Ad and affiliate marketing transparency is important to users. They want to know if biased content is in their feeds. While the industry as a whole has been leaving the responsibility of disclosure up to the influencer who is sharing content, brands should still be aware of the best ways to disclose a partnership or UGC turned into an ad.

Here are four easy ways to keep it real with your audience in a way that leaves your ads intact, but with another layer of authenticity:

Use a hashtag: #Ad #PaidPromotion #Sponsored #Partnership are some examples. It’s not hard, but it’s also not the prettiest method.
Use the caption: Keep it short, sweet, and simple. Just write within the post that it’s part of a paid partnership or relationship between the influencer and the brand.
Use a voice: Sometimes you can just say it. Verbal disclosure in video content is still disclosure so long as it’s clear. Best practice is to include the disclosure in written form, especially if you don’t have closed captioning.
Use the platform: Instagram and Facebook provide easy labeling for paid post tagging. Check out your chosen platform’s policies and features to see how you can build in disclosure to your ads.

Regulations can be tough to navigate, so sometimes it’s best to err on the side of caution when it comes to partnered content. Check out the full post of disclosure advice and more tips on the Ad Standards blog post.

10 Top Link-Building Services to Improve Your SEO (+ 10 Places to Use Them)

JULY 27, 2022

Link building is a labor of love that can pay off for more organic traffic through high search engine rankings. Here are some experts in link building to help you out! But then what? We’ve also got you covered with some of the best link-building strategies if you want to do it yourself, as well.

10 best link-building services:

OutreachZ.com
RankZ.co
Page One Power
uSERP
Newswire
From The Future
Siege Media
Whitespark
The Upper Ranks
FATJOE

10 best link-building places:

Resource pages
Guest posting
High DA websites
Infographics
Broken link building
Ask content scrapers to link back to you
Press releases
Q&A websites
YouTube
Blog commenting

Check out the full post by Search Engine Land for in-depth service reviews, link types, and bonus strategies!

How Content “Freshness” Applies to Your Google Rankings

JULY 26, 2022

We’re taking it back to 2017. Google’s Freshness Update that year included a significant algorithm update that introduced time as a relevance indicator. It caused some confusion for marketers, many of whom misunderstood the update to prioritize recent publication dates in raking results.

3 types of queries that “Freshness” algorithms apply to:

Recent events
Regularly recurring events
Frequently updated topics

Freshness vs. Frequency:

With that third query in mind, Google doesn’t directly care how frequently you post or if you keep changing the date of a post. That matters more for search parameters from a user directly. Google cares about the relevancy of that topic.

So frequency is the rate at which you publish content, while freshness is directed towards the date a page was originally published. Google understands people want to know the latest trends, not outdated ones.

The Freshness Ranking Combination

So in an attempt to match the results to fit the user’s intent, they will take into account: