Summer is well underway and while for many that means taking off on vacations and lounging in the sun, the marketing grind never stops. We’ve scoured the internet and selected five updates from the digital marketing sector that are absolute must-reads.
From TikTok's new strategic direction for the popular platform to the tactics top marketers are using to fight against spam and bots, we’ve got five highlights that happened this month in marketing.
TikTok Reveals Platform Strategy At Cannes
Several of TikTok’s leaders appeared at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, kicking off the first day of the festival with some important updates regarding the platform’s future.
TikTok’s resident of global operations solutions, Blake Chandlee, says that they’re looking to dramatically increase the number of brands and advertisers currently using the platform.
This new push for more advertising involves new programs to improve the targeting and quality of ads, as well as expanding the functionality of its in-app shopping feature.
While TikTok is a popular platform for brands and influencers to work from, Francis Stones (who heads up the European branch of TikTok’s brand safety) says that some advertisers remain skeptical of utilizing the app, for fear of being associated with “problematic content.”
According to Stones, they’ll be implementing new measures to more thoroughly vet content in order to ease brands’ concerns regarding negative associations.
Click the above link if you’re interested in learning more about this update.
How Paid Marketers are Fighting Back Against the Fake Web
Managing paid media channels and campaigns can be a frustrating experience in a world where spam and bots are so common. Fake clicks and ad views from bots can inflate metrics, giving marketers a distorted view of their data.
To combat the bots, paid media marketers are taking the following actions:
Checking for Time Zone Mismatches
Marketers are checking users’ declared time zones against the actual time zone on the device. If these time zones don’t match, the user may be concealing their identity to hide malicious intent.
Watching out for Repetitive Behaviours
Identifying repeated behaviours originating from a single IP address or user is another tactic paid media marketers use to combat bots and spam. Pinpointing repeated malicious activity from the same source can help them stop spammers from continuing this behaviour.
Analyzing Traffic Metric Anomalies.
Unusually high volumes of website traffic on certain days, with high bounce rates from outside the geographic locations targeted by campaigns, may indicate a bot attack. Marketers are carefully analyzing website traffic to identify and stop bad actors.
Other tactics taken by paid media marketers include:
- Looking for user agent inconsistencies
- Reevaluating traffic sources
- Deploying go-to-market security
To learn more about the strategies paid media marketers use to fight spam, check out the link above.
The Pros and Cons of SEO vs. PPC: How to Choose the Right Marketing Strategy
Within digital marketing, there are several strategies marketers use to generate leads and drive conversions. Within these strategies, pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) marketing are among the most popular.
PPC marketing centres around the use of paid advertisements to attract visitors to your website. Every time one of your ads is clicked on, you pay a pre-determined amount of money.
On the other hand, SEO focuses on generating organic traffic through efforts to rank higher on a search engine’s results page (SERP). The higher your website or content appears on the first page of the SERP, the greater the chance of users clicking through.
Knowing how these strategies work differently depending on your marketing goals and when to utilize either PPC or SEO marketing is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your marketing campaigns are successful.
For a more in-depth look into PPC vs SEO marketing, visit the above link.
The Importance of Social Media Sentiment Analysis (and How to Conduct it)
In discussions of standard key performance indicators (KPIs) marketers use to gauge the success of their efforts, it’s easy for sentiment to fall by the wayside. When looking at spreadsheets and data charts, we sometimes forget that each of those clicks, conversions or bounces corresponds to a real person with an opinion.
Social media sentiment is similar to social listening, wherein brands monitor comments and engagement with users who have directly tagged them or commented on their posts. While social listening looks at these direct interactions, sentiment analysis monitors what people say and express about a brand or product without the brand being directly tagged.
Interest in learning more? Click the link above!
6 Content Assets You Can Add To Make Your Blog Post a Link Magnet
Anyone who’s spent time working on search engine optimization (SEO) marketing knows the importance of backlinks.
When other high-authority websites link to your content, it helps improve your website's ranking on search engines such as Google. Unfortunately, building quality backlinks is a time-consuming and often frustrating process.
Wouldn’t it be so much easier to have all those high-authority websites decide to use those links on their own?
Top marketers at the Content Market Insitute have several tips for accomplishing this. They propose six types of content assets that attract high-quality backlinks like magnets. These types of content include:
- Templates
- Tools
- Quizzes
- Original charts and infographics
- Quotes
- Internal Links
To learn more about each of these content assets, check out the link above.
Wrapping Up
The world of digital marketing stops for no one, and this month has been no expectation. These five articles offer a snapshot into this month's marketing news, from new strategies being implemented on popular social platforms to new tips and tricks to drive backlinks.
We hope this list of vital marketing updates has been helpful and informative.
To quickly review the highlights, we learned about how TikTok’s leaders are implementing new features for their app to help advertisers thrive. That’s likely exciting news for brands and influencers already utilizing the app for their marketing campaigns.
Next, we covered paid media marketers' strategies to fight against bot attacks and spam traffic. Some savvy discernment and careful analysis goes a long way to fending off malicious traffic and keeping your marketing metrics clean.
Then we discussed the pros and cons of PPC and SEO marketing and how to know which of these popular marketing strategies is right for you and your business or website. No one wants to waste time (and money!) on a strategy that’s not the right fit for their marketing goals.
After that, we learned about social media marketing sentiment analysis and why, despite how frequently it’s overlooked, marketers need to be monitoring this. Without knowing how consumers truly feel about your brand or product, it can be hard to change what you’re doing wrong (or capitalize on what you’re doing well!)
Finally, we discovered six content assets that can be added to blog posts to drive quality backlinks. Implementing an excellent strategy for gaining backlinks can be a tricky thing to accomplish, which makes this insight incredibly valuable for marketers.
Any questions, comments, or concerns? We’d love to hear your feedback!
We’ll be back next month with five new articles for you. In the meantime, if you’re looking to learn more, please check out our existing blogs that cover various digital marketing topics!
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Nice blog post. Learned some essential things. Do more like this.