Recently, I noticed that the Reach Team passively curates A TON of great digital marketing education. This is done by sharing articles amongst each other to ensure we’re up to date with the latest trends. As I looked back through some of my Slack channels and messages with colleagues, I saw great link after great link. I figure the world is better off if you can see them too!
That’s why I am introducing The Monthly Article Roundup Series, where I will grab some of our most internally discussed links that have gone around throughout the month with some of our commentary on each.
1. Reporting: Budget Attainment as a Key Metric
This Acquisio blog shares a lot of truth about budget attainment. It’s true that most agencies don’t report on this metric. But in a perfect world, an agency spends exactly the amount it is supposed to each and every month and should be penalized accordingly if it doesn’t. Overall, this is a good resource for understanding the key metrics associated with digital marketing, and what they mean.
2. Pay-Per-Click: Bing Ads Targeting Updates
Bing Ads is keeping up in the digital marketing game with new advancements.
The little brother of Google AdWords, Bing Ads, had a pretty big update this month. The introduction of In-Market audiences could be a big advancement for their ad platform.
Essentially, Bing will create lists of individuals who have already clicked on someone else’s ad and will predict whether or not that individual is actually interested in buying something in the near future.
If they are, they appear on a list that you as an advertiser can select and target directly for your own advertising. This means that you won’t need to waste budget on clicks from people that aren’t serious about purchasing. Plus, being able to essentially use intel that your competitors have paid for is pretty great.
The Custom Audience Targeting is a feature that will allow you to leverage your own company’s data in order to create a pretty narrow filtering criteria based on things like: purchase history, tenure, renewal period, time since last purchase, customer referrals, and more. This isn’t ground breaking in the PPC world, but good to see Bing investing in their platform, as a monopoly on search engine advertising is not beneficial for advertisers (hello increased cost per clicks).
3. Search Engine Optimization: Secure Domain & SEO
Outside of the SEO community, many people are unaware that having a secure domain (having your URL start with “https” versus “http”) is actually a factor that contributes to ranking well on Google. This was first announced in 2014 and, as usual, Google has been pretty quiet about it ever since – until now. In this SERountable, we learn that a secure domain provides a “minimal boost” for SEO and there are no plans to change that at this time.
So while switching to “https” may not be your first method of increasing your organic rankings, if you’re already focusing quite a bit on SEO, acquiring an SSL Certificate may be the next best step. For the digital marketing generalist, this probably won’t make it to your to-do list. But, the SEO specialist should be aware of this and any further updates that Google may provide in the future. Keep an eye out here!
4. Digital Marketing: Multi-Channel Marketing
I’m always excited to see when new research comes out about digital marketing trends and habits, and this report from KoMarketing is no exception.
We see that on average, marketers are allocating the most amount of their budget to social media advertising. Paid search and paid display come in spots 2 and 3. However, B2B digital marketers are not using social media to the same extent as B2C marketers are. In B2B the top channels are email, organic, and paid search. With our B2B clients, we still see good traction with LinkedIn. But, there is typically a limit to how much you can spend with just LI.
5. Mobile and Email Marketing
This post on the future of email and mobile marketing is obviously from an American blog and doesn’t require a marketer to contend with Canadian Anti-Spam Laws (CASL). Therefore, you should take this blog with a grain of salt and be extra cautious when adopting any email-related suggestions.
However, the main point of this is that people are using their phones more than their computers, which is absolutely true. This is a trend we’ve been seeing with our clients for months and it appears to be happening to clients across the board – in any industry!
Simply put, the adoption of mobile is changing the rules of the lead generation and digital marketing game. To be a successful marketer, your strategy needs to be changing too!
If you have legally acquired your emails (in compliance with CASL) and have enough resources to build a campaign off of them, then this article gives a slick overview of how to connect multiple channels in a strategic and intentional way. I like it a lot!
Well, that’s it for our first Article Roundup. Let us know what you think of this concept by leaving a comment or emailing us at marketing@reachdigital.ca!