Knowhow Marketing Lab

Dreaming of a life where you control your time and destiny through the power of marketing? At Seymour Digital Marketing, my partner and I have spent over a decade living that dream—from our serene country home by the ocean, surrounded by dogs, chickens, and a pool, all thanks to mastering Google Ads and SEO. Through the KnowHow Marketing Podcast, we’re sharing the secrets that helped us build this lifestyle of freedom. Each week, we connect with top marketers, dive into the latest strategies, and offer exclusive resources like our free SEO course, a 5-day Google Ads email challenge, and an essential on-page SEO guide. And if you're ready to take control of your life, our paid 5-week live Google Ads training course, offered twice a year, teaches you how to manage Google Ads for yourself or sell it as a service—giving you the freedom to shape your career and live on your own terms. Tune in, learn from our journey, and start building your own marketing-driven success story

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Navigating the WordPress Roadmap: Future Trends and Directions 09/05/2024

Navigating the WordPress Roadmap: Future Trends and Directions 0:00 - Introduction & Guest Introduction 1:18 - History of WordPress & Greg's Involvement 3:00 - The Latest WordPress 6.6 Update & Community Concerns 5:20 - WordPress: Open Source vs. Automatic 7:00 - The Evolution of the WordPress Block Editor 10:00 - Traditional Themes vs. Block Themes 13:10 - Impact of Block Themes on Site Speed & Builders like Elementor 16:00 - Customization with the Block Editor: The Future of Theme Development 19:00 - How Block Themes Affect Web Design for Businesses 21:30 - Advanced Features in the Block Editor with Cadence 24:00 - Community Feedback on WordPress Changes 27:00 - Future of CMS and Market Share 29:00 - Upcoming: Improving User Experience & Accessibility [00:00:00] Pip: Good morning. We are here today to go over navigating WordPress the roadmap. So just, this is going to be all about the history, what to expect, what's coming next, and we got our expert, this guy, that guy, Greg. So a lot of today's going to be about questions, but Greg, introduce yourself. [00:00:20] Greg: Hello everyone. I'm Greg McKinnon with the original 72 creative and we're a full service website, graphic design and digital marketing firm in Vancouver [00:00:28] Pip: interesting. And I'm Pip, as [00:00:30] Seymour Digital Media, and we collaborate because marketing is a group effort. So if you're joining us, pipe in, say hi at some point. And we should be shared into the group and then pinned to the top of the group. So if you're not seeing us or you're looking for us, come join the Facebook group, Cyberpunk Geeks Marketing Mixer. [00:00:49] Pip: We have a secret, which we'll tell you at the end cause we'll share our secret then it's not a secret. Greg, that's not a secret. [00:00:57] Greg: not a secret. [00:00:59] Pip: Secret. Okay. [00:01:00] Okay, Greg. So why this came up? I'm like, why this topic came up? Because you seem to pay attention to everything WordPress and I, you started talking about it and you mentioned the originators name. [00:01:18] Pip: And so I wanted to go first through the history of WordPress, how it started, even how you got involved. So take it away. [00:01:27] Greg: Yeah I do try as [00:01:30] much as possible to stay up on WordPress, everything WordPress since I'm building WordPress every day. Sometimes it's a little bit difficult to keep up with what's going on just because I'm in the daily building of sites constantly, so news and things like that I gotta find time for. [00:01:51] Greg: Yeah. But this topic kind of came out of the [00:02:00] last release of WordPress 6. 6, when the community There seemed to be a little bit of a, I don't want to say backlash, but a disappointment with some of the WordPress community on the direction and where WordPress is going or how it's being developed. [00:02:26] Greg: And people were. I [00:02:30] saw some people talking about whether or not they thought Automatic was really driving the development of WordPress based on Automatic's goals as a business, as opposed to the WordPress community as an open source. platform and input from the community. I had, so it initially, there was a couple of things that came [00:03:00] out when 6. [00:03:00] Greg: 6 was released, but I haven't heard as much in the last little bit, but there was a flurry of questions on, the direction and who's steering WordPress. [00:03:14] Pip: So WordPress is a open source software, right? [00:03:20] Greg: Yes. [00:03:20] Pip: And you mentioned a company that owns it, or how does that work? Because open source means anyone can go and edit it or use [00:03:30] it. [00:03:47] Greg: with the community. And Automatic is also a business that gets clients on WordPress on the, so there's WordPress. [00:04:00] com, which is the automatic version, the automatic company who gives you websites on the WordPress. [00:04:09] Greg: com version, which is a paid service. And then there's WordPress. org, which is the open source, just download WordPress and do everything yourself. So Automatic runs WordPress. com and you can pay them to get your site. It's a slightly different flavor of [00:04:30] WordPress. There's some things that are locked down. [00:04:32] Greg: Like you can't go to WordPress. com and do whatever you like, like you could with Automatic. Just downloading wordpress. org completely yourself and just doing whatever you want to it a thing. So [00:04:48] Pip: Now so yeah, 'cause on wordpress.org you can make a WordPress blog, right? With Word, it would be whatever your username or whatever [00:05:00] your name you want is.wordpress.com, right? Oh, wait, that's the.com, not the.org. [00:05:06] Greg: yeah, wordpress. org is just the place where you can learn about WordPress, the open source content management system and download the software and see plugins that are available and the themes that are available for it all completely free wordpress. com. Is where you would go where [00:05:30] you could it's like the Shopify a thing you go to Shopify You sign up you start paying monthly or whatever package you want And they hold your hand and they do things for you and it's all hosted there and you can select templates from their you know premium templates there and you know get assistance from The wordpress. [00:05:54] Greg: com people to, to build your site. So it's a more catered type of [00:06:00] service, but it's a pay service. Whereas the wordpress. org, you just download it yourself. You can install it on whatever host [00:06:08] Pip: and you don't, do you recommend them as a host? I don't usually, they're not my first go to. Okay. [00:06:30] Silence. [00:06:35] Greg: and your needs for your site. [00:06:38] Pip: So are you saying that the company that owns wordpress. com makes all the decisions for wordpress. org? Or is it the community that makes the decisions about how the open source is going? [00:06:52] Greg: That was what came out of that last release was some people were trying to we're [00:07:00] suggesting that maybe automatic, the company behind WordPress itself is, has, And does most of the development of the application maybe they have more, obviously they have more input and direction into where the application is going, but is it too much because they are a business and it. [00:07:27] Greg: Is an open source application [00:07:30] and how much are they actually listening to input of the open source community on suggestions and where wordpress is going or are they really looking at wordpress as this is where we want to take it. This is where we are taking it and Maybe not as listening to the open source community and people who use it where they want it potentially to go features and stuff like that.[00:08:00] [00:08:00] Pip: So give me an example Like, where is the community wanting to go and where's, what's the company doing and how do, I guess a lot of people feel this way about WordPress and about the direction. And how does the community have any pull, is another question. [00:08:15] Greg: The community should have pull. It's a, it's an open source application and, WordPress should be developed based on what the users in the community want the application to be within [00:08:30] like a guideline, like you, the WordPress community can't just be like, Oh we want it to be like this now, and go off in some complete different direction. [00:08:40] Greg: So automatic is there also to, to make sure that. The overall goal of the application is is achieved. I would say, I don't know how much input they actually do take from the community, and this is why the question came up. [00:09:00] So one of the things that I had heard about was basically they're developing the block editor and block themes. [00:09:12] Greg: And a lot of the interface on the development to move that direction for WordPress has a much different, user interface for all of that new new functionality. [00:09:30] And so some of the community has been crying for keep the admin UI the same throughout. Don't have old UI in some places and then new UI in other places. [00:09:46] Greg: They feel like for a better experience for all users that the UI doesn't jump around. So if you're using a block theme, part of your WordPress admin [00:10:00] experience is what people have been used to for the past probably five years. [00:10:07] Pip: Years [00:10:08] Greg: And then the new UI for the block editor and block theme is completely different. [00:10:15] Pip: is that what I'm seeing when I use because I, we use similar programs to you and I'm now seeing this weird. Words. It's all the page stuff is all squi it's super different. [00:10:28] Greg: yeah, it's a so [00:10:30] yeah, so that's basically the new the newer admin interface that you're seeing in the block experience, the block theme experience and so people, depending on where you go at in any section of the admin, sometimes you'll be seeing that new you I. [00:10:51] Greg: And sometimes you'll be seeing the old UI and they really are wanting WordPress to be like, if we're changing the UI of the admin [00:11:00] interface, change it everywhere. Let's not have it mismatched and because that just confuses people who are trying to use the application. [00:11:13] Pip: I agree. Is this where the integration of AI is coming in and confusing things? Or is it they've actually made a new interface and this is how they want it to be? Because I know change is hard and that's sometimes why we don't like things. But! [00:11:30] I would really I don't like the new it's oh, it feels way more overwhelming to me, but maybe that's just cause I'm not a web dude. [00:11:40] Greg: I don't think that it has anything to do with the introduction of A. I. or the use of A. I. It's really a case of having a new interface for a A new feature in WordPress, the block themes and them not having [00:12:00] that new interface throughout the entire application. They've left the old stuff the old way, and they've put the new stuff, this new admin. [00:12:11] Greg: interface way. So just they're developing this new stuff and implementing a new UI layout in that, but not touching any of the old, and it's causing a little bit of confusion. I think when people are using the block theme because like you [00:12:30] said, you, You get in there and all of a sudden you're presented with this new layout, and it works differently than the old UI and having both in there, I find is causing confusion for people. [00:12:47] Pip: I did feel really confused, actually pretty overwhelmed, and just I just got to get what I need done. I don't understand what's going on here. When did we add a new plugin? I didn't know about that's what I actually thought. So isn't that funny? Because I do [00:13:00] notice there's some AI integrations in there. [00:13:03] Pip: I'm not sure about the automations. And what about the themes and customizations? Has that changed? [00:13:09] Greg: For the block themes, definitely you're getting that new UI experience and the way that you that you develop your site using a block theme is completely different from how you used to use a traditional theme that has the [00:13:30] customizer where you just go into the customizer and you have the side. [00:13:33] Greg: A panel of a bunch of sections where you can click into and Okay that I can change my colors here. I can change my fonts here. I can You know, change my post layout there and that type of stuff. The block theme editor is basically creating your entire website in that block theme builder experience.[00:14:00] [00:14:00] Pip: Is that going to get rid of theme set or no, like, how's that going to work? Ooh [00:14:05] Greg: themes will definitely be more lightweight because really a theme will be A set of styles that you maybe have predefined but where you where you add your navigation. Where you add your logo the [00:14:30] way you set up your headers and footers it's all done with the block building experience instead of it being pre programmed into the theme and then just going through settings to, turn things on or off. [00:14:48] Greg: You're actually building it yourself with the blocks available in the block in the block builder. [00:14:55] Pip: Will that make it oh, goodness oh hold on one second. Can you create your [00:15:00] arena because she's calling. So which means there might be an issue. Cause she knows we're live. So yeah, we'll get that checked right away. That is quite interesting. So I'm wondering when you say the themes are more lightweight, does that mean there'll be faster? [00:15:13] Pip: Or what about Elementor or the big heavy ones that people use? [00:15:19] Greg: Yeah. So page builders, if you're using a page builder, you will still have an old an old style theme, [00:15:29] Pip: Yeah. [00:15:29] Greg: [00:15:30] not a block. You can't maybe I shouldn't say that. I would assume if you're using a block theme, You're probably not going to use a page builder like Elementor, but you probably still could and just use the block theme to, to build your header, footer and theme. [00:15:54] Greg: style. But then when it comes to the page, building out your pages, [00:16:00] you could probably still use your preferred page builder instead of the blocks. But I would assume most people, if you're using a block theme and building your site with blocks, you're probably going to build your entire site with the block builder, not install another page editor to [00:16:18] Pip: okay, so like the, we're talking the beaver builder, is that done then? Or the, I had the muffin builder. I liked origin, site origin was the builders I used. So builders are going to [00:16:30] be passé. Ooh, that's a great. [00:16:34] Greg: WordPress is trying to move towards a system that you don't need those. [00:16:43] Pip: Okay. [00:16:44] Greg: That's the whole reason behind the block editor is to basically get your page editing abilities up to the same as what these page builders could do. The [00:17:00] flexibility that they had. I do see eventually WordPress will go and people will just get used to the block editor and not bother installing a page builder because the block builder basically does You know, 90 percent of what those page builders do. [00:17:24] Pip: Okay. So there's a couple of really big things in here before we get to like security [00:17:30] and third party integrations and all that but so what happens to people who business owners or people that manage their own sites, which no, you shouldn't I've learned just so you know but For those people that have a website design and stuff and the block builders come into play and business owners sometimes or people want to mess around and learn, right? [00:17:50] Pip: Especially for people who learn. So is there going to be this cross between some pages are going to have the block builder and some pages will be the theme [00:18:00] builder and there'll be like, it'll be a mishmash of stuff in there? [00:18:05] Greg: Think of it as two different things, right? You can pick a traditional theme or you can pick a block theme. The only difference is how the theme gets set up, how you create your menus, your headers, your footers your overall theme styles, right? You can go the traditional route, which basically gives you a lot of people are using really highly [00:18:30] customizable. [00:18:31] Greg: Themes where you can go into the customizer and pick colors and set fonts and, tick on or off a bunch of settings that make the overall theme look and act slightly different depending on how you do it. The block theme is essentially a complete do anything you want. So it's a it is a step up from current themes where you're basically picking [00:19:00] from settings, but maybe have not complete control over the entire header or footer or other elements of the theme. [00:19:09] Greg: The block themes, you build it completely from scratch with the block editor. And so that's all theme related. Then when you're actually building pages or creating posts on your site, then you can also use [00:19:30] the block builder to create those pages on your site, right? Cause that's the content within the page, not. [00:19:38] Greg: Not the header, footer, theme related stuff. It's basically just a progression for WordPress to further implement. the block editor within WordPress to give you that high customization option to do and set up [00:20:00] your site however you want all using the block editor. [00:20:10] Greg: You're muted. [00:20:12] Pip: Do you like the most common phrase now said in the world according to digital. So do you like the block editor [00:20:23] Greg: I have been using the block editor ever since it was released because [00:20:30] I am more of a WordPress purist. I tried not to install plugins just for the sake of installing plugins. As a web designer, web developer for over 20 years when I've built web WordPress sites, I had maybe more ability to set up websites for clients where [00:21:00] they didn't just, okay, I set it up. [00:21:02] Greg: Here's a theme that we've created and then go put all your content in that one big, text block that used to be available for WordPress, right? I was able to set things up so that clients could have. different layouts and do things without the use of page builders. When page builders came around and gave you a little bit more flexibility [00:21:30] on how you could style and create your content on your page it was just such a drastic change from that big, text block that you could just do from former WordPress, like old WordPress that people were like, Oh my God, this is amazing. [00:21:48] Greg: We can do all these new layouts. So they became super popular really quick, but I never used them because I was able to, as a developer. create [00:22:00] more advanced layouts for clients that, you know, and tell them, put this stuff into the editor, put this into this section using custom fields. [00:22:10] Greg: We'll create the page. A lot of the page layouts didn't come out cookie cutter, like most WordPress sites. So I never used WordPress the plugins for page builders and was, against them always because I knew how heavy they were how much code [00:22:30] they loaded on the site and drag down your page speeds and things like that [00:22:35] Greg: then when the block editor came out, cause WordPress saw. [00:22:39] Greg: The progression of, how people wanted to edit their, the flexibility of editing their content and creating layouts, they introduced the block editors so that it had similar functionality to be able to do those more advanced layouts like the page builders. Because it was default WordPress, [00:23:00] I just started using that for for creating all of my pages and sites. [00:23:08] Pip: Okay. What about the so for instance, I know you use cadence. Will you still be using cadence once the block editor is like full in there? [00:23:17] Greg: It is full in there, and I do use cadence as my starting point to customize sites for clients and I completely use the block editor [00:23:30] with the assistance of an additional block plugin to extend the block options. within WordPress. Cause Cadence has a a block plugin to, to give you more advanced features of blocks to throw into your site. [00:23:50] Pip: Okay. And what are like, what are some give me an example of a more advanced feature. [00:23:54] Greg: The default blocks for instance, for just a paragraph of [00:24:00] content or a heading, the default block is either a heading block or a paragraph block. But the settings that you can use for those blocks you can change the color, you can change the size, you can bold, you can do normal things like that for text. [00:24:21] Greg: But if you install an advanced Block plugin, like cadence advanced blocks. You can use a [00:24:30] similar text or heading block that give you way more options to style the text, change it to par, change it to a paragraph, to change it to a span, a diviv. a heading... /episode/index/show/0f00779a-4a64-4cf7-ba34-2cd575a50cc6/id/36315060

SEO on other search engines: Going beyond Google. 08/29/2024

This Month In The World Of Marketing 08/22/2024

This Month In The World Of Marketing [00:00:00] Introduction [00:00:40] Google’s Monopoly and the Impact on SEO [00:01:52] The Google vs. Bing Search Engine Debate [00:03:12] Apple and Amazon's Market Practices [00:05:13] Google's Relationship with Mozilla Firefox [00:08:00] SEO Core Updates & Their Impact on Websites [00:11:03] SEO Best Practices and Content Quality [00:12:47] Perplexity vs. ChatGPT for Search [00:13:34] Website Updates and WordPress Developments [00:16:47] Unified UI in WordPress and Block Themes [00:17:42] Free Blogging Platforms: WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace [00:17:02] Social Media Algorithm Updates [00:00:00]: This month in the world of marketing search social websites and AI. Hi, I'm Pip Seymour, digital media, and this is. Yes, my name is Phelan. I work with Pip at Seymour Digital Media. And I'm Rina from Little Works Indie Media. [00:00:14]: And last but not least, I'm Greg with Original 32 Creative. Never least and every month we get on here and talk about marketing and all the things that are happening. We met on Tuesday and went over things. There's a lot going on, isn't there? [00:00:30] Rina, you are out of the gate first this round cause I know you had a lot going on in social and more. [00:00:40]: Yeah. There are a few things, what have I got here? Oh my goodness. Okay, so Google has been in trouble for Monopoly and they're, it looks like they're looking at how to organize the data so that other other search engines can use it to index sites also. So that looks interesting how that's [00:01:00] going to play out. That was the big topic we talked about on Tuesday, wasn't it? [00:01:04]: About how, politics and marketing, right? Won't, they have to do the same for a bunch of companies though, if they do it to Google, you think? I think they will. I would think so, but we'll see how that plays out. It is going to be a bit difficult for marketers, I imagine, because all of a sudden SEO will be Changed. [00:01:29]: I don't [00:01:30] know, I actually don't know the user, numbers for all the other search engines that are on DuckDuckGo and, all the other ones already. So I can't really say if Google is still dominant, but I think it is, but if they actually, Phelan, you were saying that they were thinking about, not populating Chrome as the default. [00:01:52]: Browser on devices, right? Yeah. So the court case settled on whether they were a monopoly [00:02:00] on a search engine, not even necessarily the website. That's a whole separate thing that they're doing. And I don't think Chrome is going to be. That, that's going to be the issue. It's them as a search engine that they use their position to get Firefox and Apple to use Google as the default. [00:02:17]: Like when you search on their systems that will by default use Google. And I think that was the main, the crux of it, which is an easier case to settle because that was the Microsoft case from back in the day. Was right. We, you [00:02:30] bundle this, Microsoft. Software onto the system so other companies can't even get a chance to get in there to make new search engines or whatever the case might be and so that's the kind of the crux of it And it's still going to be like we're talking years like google's got Billions of dollars to go and fight this for as long as humanly possible. [00:02:50]: So who knows how it's ultimately going to shake out? It's going to be in the court cases for forever, but it definitely does [00:03:00] open up the Pandora's box. I've heard news of Apple getting. Charged with this as well because of certain ways that they've been doing like devices and then also Amazon, obviously for their marketplace stuff. [00:03:12]: Like you can't also you can't be a marketplace and then also sell on that platform. Like you have to pick one or the other, which I think is perfectly reasonable. I find it a little interesting that there maybe not picking on Google because it clearly is the, go to search engine [00:03:30] to, to find things. [00:03:31]: But for. As far as monopolies go the windows operating system comes bundled in your default browser is edge and edges. Default search engine is big. So having Google have agreements with Firefox or other browsers to Have their default search engine from those browsers to be Google, I think is [00:04:00] a leveling of the playing field for the jumpstart that Microsoft edge and Bing have on every windows system that, that is. [00:04:13]: Yeah and there are a lot of corporate places where you work where you can't get on like socials. You can't get on. You have to use Bing. You don't use. Google, right? Because I don't know, they don't allow it. Yeah, it's security. [00:04:30] So Yeah, it's a lot of like enterprise, they have a special Windows is does a lot of enterprise level stuff. [00:04:36]: And so if you're at work, you don't get to use whatever website you want to go to. You have to use Bing, you, because it's been secured. And then they also know all the security for your, and people don't even realize. They don't even realize like they, and what were you saying? What were we saying the other day? [00:04:52]: It was like who's owned, who does Google fund for their browser completely? Oh Mozilla. [00:05:00] So Mozilla who creates Firefox who is the only non corporate entity when they decide on standards for browsers and stuff like that, and SEO stuff, like how All these kind of players all interact with each other. [00:05:13]: They have a standards so that they could build from there because it's stupid for everyone to build their own JavaScript library or whatever. And so they all, and Google entirely pays for Mozilla. It's a 340 million a year expense that they just donate to Mozilla [00:05:30] in the, hopes that again like, you were saying, Greg, that they they have some competition. [00:05:36]: They can like, even if they are paying entirely for them, they could at least say, Hey, there's some people here that are like, not our, we're friends, but we're not like, they're going to hold our feet to the fire. And that's been the argument of why they fund Mozilla. I'm interested, not so much in default search browsers and all that. [00:05:54]: I'm interested in how Google's going to share the data. [00:06:00] That's more along the lines of where my interest goes, especially when it comes to marketing and SEO indexing. Like how does that actually work? Is Bing going to give us a different, does Bing already Bing already indexes a slightly different, but I don't actually go on things. [00:06:16]: So I don't really know that much. We do some. Yeah, how do they index? Because you guys are the SEO guys. They take a lot of what they do from Google, but we've, there wasn't a big uptick [00:06:30] when the AI started to be used. There wasn't an uptick, but there was an uptick for like perplexity chat, GBT as search, like being used more so we're seeing that more, but still. Most people use Google and maybe that's just because of market share already. Most people use Google in, but not in China because Google's not in China. Yeah. [00:07:00] So with the, there was a leak about four years ago of Yandex's entire code base and so what they had found when they, so when Yandex released their, got their database release, they, people went through it and then they found that they were roughly like, so they said it was like 70 percent of the same results, which is pretty close to what they got on Google based on what they were assuming.[00:07:30] [00:07:30]: And so what they kind of figure is because these guys all again, Yandex, Mo Mozilla, Google, and Bing all actually sit down and coordinate the SEO and what should we have as ranking signals? So they're not going to be identical overlap, but they do coordinate Hey, we should rank this up. [00:07:47]: We should promote this type of stuff. So when, like when eat came out, that was across the board because they all agreed Hey, we need to do something about this problem with authoritativeness. Ooh, [00:08:00] that takes us to our next topic. Ha. Search algorithm update. The core update. Yeah. [00:08:05]: You guys heard about that? Yeah, It's been very volatile. I find that I don't really want to know what's going on until. Closer to the end because I find that there's a lot of movement and then Like it washes out and then you know But a lot of the seos talk about it all the time Like the day it starts to happen what they see what do you guys like that?[00:08:30] [00:08:30]: What do you want to know about like the core updates in the end? [00:08:32]: I like, to know how big they are and how volatile that's made some websites. It helps to give me insight. I usually just, my sites, there's really, the only time I noticed a huge shift was last March. There were quite a few clients complaining about their paid ads, but it wasn't, it didn't end up being any, Anything from their paid ads. [00:08:58]: It was their organic [00:09:00] leads that had dropped in that algorithmic shift in March. I guess it was, other than that. And you can notice quite quickly. So that's the only reason I follow it. Okay. Yeah. I don't follow it. I don't do SEO, so I don't follow it much. I do, we do like to have a general idea. [00:09:18]: We're not, we're like, we're like, and we, and, we're not, we're not super heavy into it. We're just like, we need to know enough to get by, but we're not doing some of the deep [00:09:30] crawl like, there's people who specialize, like you have a really hard time differentiating yourself if you're not like deeply in the know. [00:09:38]: And then also what they typically find is, like you were saying, Rina, that things will shift so much. And then what you actually just need to focus on is making sure you have a good product that you know who you're selling it to. And then over time, if you keep consistently working at it, you're going to just slowly rise to the top because your site is an authoritative source of [00:10:00] information for whatever product service you're providing. [00:10:03]: And over time, that will, as long as you're not doing anything too sketchy, you should do just fine. That was their update to the helpful content update too, is like niche websites. They're looking more closely. It's almost like an eat for niche. So having the niche within your industry, like having the, having your topic [00:10:30] being really niche in that, so there are a lot of websites that are just trying to catch all the things, right? [00:10:36]: And Google's trying to remove that, that, those big websites, like the small niche ones have a better chance of. Moving up in the, in rank. Yeah. And yeah, we've definitely seen that with, especially with, if you are smaller, you, it is better for you to have a niche that you're going after because you, because you have less competition and then it just [00:11:00] makes it easier for you to rank. [00:11:01]: And then you can always expand. There's nothing that says that your website has to stay like locked in forever. You're allowed to expand. And like that's often a lot of people think like Oh I have to go after like I have to be the biggest service provider because I want to sell to everyone It's like no, it's actually better to like Niche down really hard at the beginning and then just slowly expand out because then you're you always have an authoritative source within that niche and it's much easier to then get clients [00:11:30] because again, you're competing against the biggest companies for those big keywords. [00:11:34]: Whereas if you go for the smaller, more focused keywords, much easier for you to rank. Yeah. Yeah. It's totally easier. Yeah. It's a little more costly too, in terms of time, when you're developing it, cause you've got to do all the content building out of the gate, but once it's built, you're solid. [00:11:55]: Yeah. And you just keep adding on [00:12:00] as you, as you grow. But yeah, but yeah, I think that was part of the, because people keep talking about the same things and it's like, no, just get a niche and stick with it. And then you'll, and if you just do it consistently, you're going to be fine. So much harder for them to say that then for them to go and like speculate on, oh, well, maybe this update has caused X, Y, Z. [00:12:22]: It's I think it's just. It's not as, it's not as easy as that because it is, it is so volatile, right? If you're, if you have [00:12:30] somebody who has like very specific, like if you're selling sandals and all of a sudden like. Oh, there's a new sandal like law that comes in, like it's like, okay, how do you go about dealing with that? [00:12:39]: And it's like, that's the kind of stuff that it's harder to track. But again, it's not like the most, it's, there's so many other things to focus on. Like if you're focused on just what Google's algorithm is doing and not like, oh, I need to just keep building stuff because that's ultimately what people are looking for is I have a question and I need it answered. [00:12:57]: And then [00:13:00] that's where they, that's why Google exists and why search engines exist. Yeah, that's actually so now with the with the AI and the way people are using AI now and writing content people are wondering how Google's going to track AI, like the content written by AI and if it's written well, [00:13:30] will it still rank? [00:13:31]: And so then people are testing it out and I've seen a couple things where people are, are testing their AI written content and they're ranking just fine. I don't think Google's ever going to penalize you if it's written well and it's good and it's not plagiarized. I think if it's, if it makes sense and it's, helpful. [00:13:55]: I don't think they're going to, they're going to ding you on that. I'm not seeing [00:14:00] anything that shows that at all. They have said that they are not worried about it. They, their stance has been, Hey, we've had automated content forever and we don't penalize that. [00:14:12]: And it's about the same thing. And that if, yeah. And that they're much more worried about people getting, crappy content that has a bunch of spelling errors or that's why the whole eat thing came out. And again, as long as you have good content, it's been edited and revised. And again, people are, want to read it and [00:14:30] they find it interesting, then you're going to be fine. [00:14:32]: I think it's the only thing that maybe happens more is the spamming of these AI tools, right? People just, oh, I can, yeah, I can just flood the world with all this. I can do 2000 blogs in a month and it's like, okay, but why? And what is it doing? Is it helpful? Does anybody care? Who's reading this? [00:14:49]: Exactly. It's quality over quantity when it comes to that. All right. Let's shift it into something different. What [00:15:00] are you doing on your websites now? For like for to keep people on your website? What's a cool thing you're doing? Give us some insider tips, some things, what you're doing, some fun, new, cool things. [00:15:16]: Oh, insider tips. I'll tell you what I'm seeing a lot of that I think people should be looking at, but I'm seeing a lot of rotating banner ads like slider banner ads being done through HTML and CSS. And when done right, [00:15:30] they're SEO friendly. If done wrong, it's just a bunch of animated images and you're really getting nothing from it. [00:15:36]: And they're large, which is another problem. So if you're doing it through HTML and CSS, they're usually smaller in file size. They actually have more SEO value because you're using HTML text versus just text in an image. And it looks cleaner and loads faster. So I see a lot of people using images with text on it. [00:15:55]: But if you're building it through HTML and CSS, there's more value in that. [00:16:00] And I see a lot of websites starting to switch over to that. So as far as like designing and development and keeping people on websites, you're not really keeping people on the website, but it looks better and it loads faster and they look nicer. [00:16:13]: And because it's. HTML and CSS. The SEO value is a little bit higher. Oh, all right. That's a cool tip. Thanks, Greg. Phelan, do you have anything? Oh, I was gonna say so something that we've been playing around with is heat mapping tools, and then [00:16:30] actually seeing how people are interacting with the content. [00:16:32]: So one that we've been playing around with is Microsoft Clarity. It is a free service that you can use and then it'll tell you how people are actually looking at the content that you have on your page and where they're getting hung up, where they're dropping off. That's really interesting. [00:16:47]: And then, yeah, so what it does is it, yeah, so you set it up and then it just. Over time, it will show you where people are actually clicking, how far down the page they're getting. And you can use that information to be like, okay, I really [00:17:00] need to adjust this button to make sure people are clicking this more and people actually can see the value that we're bringing. [00:17:06]: So that's been a big thing that we've been focusing on is like seeing how people actually interact. Because otherwise, you, the only way you would know that is, Hey, are people filling out the form? But now you have something a little more granular that you can actually see. And what was the name of that again? [00:17:21]: It's called Microsoft Clarity. You had me at free. [00:17:30] [00:17:30]: That's always good. Okay. Rena, do you have anything? I think you're muted, Rena. I think we lost you. [00:17:39]: Sorry. Yeah. Yes. So that's cool. Thanks guys. So what are you doing in terms of social media? Are you on social media doing any kind of like, are you using any tools on social media that are that are good for people who are building out their websites or creating content? [00:18:00]: Anything on social media? I mean, I feel like everything you do is should be done in conjunction, but I don't know if we're doing anything necessarily that like we aren't we're testing out various tools to see which one sticks better. [00:18:13]: I don't know if we've necessarily found one, I think I will say we've done, we've been playing around a little more with like getting getting these tools to auto-generate, like create repurposed content. So just, we've been testing out things like you just use like, we just use like chat GPT to just make like, [00:18:30] Hey, take this blog post and then spin it out into a social media content calendar. [00:18:33]: And then just use that as the baseline of what we're doing. We haven't, we don't have any specific tools that we've just necessarily, we're necessarily doing in addition to that though. Just trying to take one piece of content and put it everywhere you can. So it's not even like it just building from there. [00:18:50]: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. We use publer as our scheduler, and that helps us a lot to stay organized and make sure we have everything ready for [00:19:00] the clients. So that way they're, they have a scheduled out 3 months, 6 months, or whatever it is. And that helps out quite a bit. Yeah. [00:19:10]: Cool. So guys, that's it. That's all the time we have. Thanks so much. This was awesome. I learned a lot. I got some good stuff, some good ideas. So yeah, we'll see you next month. I'm sure. Thanks so much. All right. Thanks. Okay. Bye. /episode/index/show/0f00779a-4a64-4cf7-ba34-2cd575a50cc6/id/36315080

What Is Accessible and Inclusive Design 08/08/2024

What Is Accessible and Inclusive Design What Is Accessible and Inclusive Design [00:00:00] Introduction and Welcome [00:00:32] Importance of Accessibility in Web Design [00:02:00] SEO and Accessibility [00:03:00] Design Principles: Color Contrast [00:06:00] Text Over Images and Responsive Design [00:10:00] Pattern and Visual Fatigue [00:13:30] Font Sizes and the Golden Ratio [00:16:00] Managing Content Layout [00:17:30] Technical Aspects: ARIA Labels and Keyboard Navigation [00:18:53] Tabbing and Screen Readers [00:21:00] Alt Text and Heading Structure [00:25:49] Accessibility Plugins [00:00:00] We live. I think we're live. Welcome to this. Yeah. Welcome to this week's Geekspeak where we're going to talk about accessibility and websites. And I am Rina Rina from little works, indie media. And my cohost is Greg McKinnon with original 72 creative. Hello everyone. So let's jump into the topic. Great. Okay. Yeah, I came up with this topic as part of my 12 [00:00:30] 12 topic series for this year. [00:00:32] And my blog fell by the wayside because I've just been busy doing other stuff. But I think this topic is important, very important moving forward because there is a lot more prominence on Making websites accessible, both the website design itself and also the way it's coded. [00:00:56] Are you finding that also as you move [00:01:00] forward with a lot of your projects? It is the law. So yes. The provincial governments in BC and Ontario passed it and we're expecting the rest of the provinces to go through, if you are in a province that also has it. As law dropped that province in the comments below because I haven't actually checked into it in a while for other provinces, but yes, we definitely integrate that also because it's a a key factor for SEO [00:01:30] for Google, so it's not just only, you're not only doing it because you're required to, and it's benevolent for all, accessible is is good for, I forgot what I was going to say, what the word is, but anyways it's good for the world. [00:01:45] Good for the Google. It's good for everyone. So the sooner you hop on board and think of this as a priority on your website, the better off you'll be is my thought. Yeah, absolutely. I think [00:02:00] probably maybe you as well, but Phelan and Pip obviously would be able to speak quite well on the SEO side of. [00:02:08] accessibility, but obviously Google's always changing their factors. And because it's something that is that is moving forward, something that everybody needs to be looking into. I'm sure they are also. Looking at those factors within their rankings. Yeah. So the word I was looking for was [00:02:30] inclusive. I hate it when those words leave me, but yeah, it's not only for inclusiveness, although that is supposed to be the prime reason. [00:02:37] And it should be the other motivator is just ranking. So you definitely want to take care of this. All so we the title ended up being designed on its own. So we are going to focus. on design, but we are going to mention some technical aspects too. We are not going to mention all the technical aspects because if you've ever read the requirements on the BC government page, it [00:03:00] is dense and a lot, so there's a lot there, but there are some major tick boxes that if you make these changes and organize these things, then you're definitely heading in the right direction and you'll get the good results that you're looking for. [00:03:15] So do you want to start us off with some of the design ideas, Greg? Yeah, sure. The main one for design, obviously the biggest is the color contrast. So that is basically having text over [00:03:30] an image or over some background color, the contrast of those two colors. needs to be at a certain percentage to be deemed accessible for the visually Impaired I guess people with bad eyesight and even people with like myself who have pretty good Sometimes it's difficult to to read graphics that people come up with Or even if it's just not even only [00:04:00] graphics, but anywhere on your site where you might have text on an image or a background color is really important that the contrast of those two colors is a certain percentage. [00:04:13] that would meet the accessibility guidelines. So let's just talk about that a little bit more because people will be asking, what is that percentage? And I don't think that we really need to know that percentage as much as we need to know what that means. So when we're dealing with contrast colors, you [00:04:30] might think that red and green are good contrast colors, but if they're in the same intensity, then they're probably not. [00:04:36] So what we want to do is, talk about contrast being light and dark together, working with light colors and dark colors together. And red always organizes itself to black if you're not seeing colors. So black and red do not make good high contrast colors even though they appear that way if you are I if your site isn't impaired, that might appear that way. [00:04:59] It might appear [00:05:00] really poppy and bright, but it's actually can be problematic, but I did want to talk about one thing that you brought up. This idea of text over images on images, when we, when you think about a website, I actually like to pull out the text from the images and lay the text on top of the image. [00:05:20] On the website platform rather than actually putting the text in the image for two reasons. One is because if the text isn't in the [00:05:30] image and you don't put that on the alt text, if you describe the alt text and you don't get every little piece of text in there because that you can't have a huge alt text. [00:05:39] If you don't have that, then the electronic readers can't read it. There's going to be something that's missed. If you have text, if you're using headers that are and overlays, text overlays that are part of the, you type it into the website rather than you have an image with it on it, that's going to work better because readers will [00:06:00] read the text that's actually in the text. [00:06:02] On the website. So that's one important thing. And then the second reason why is because if you put a lot of text and this, I feel like we might be hitting the same age, Greg, or I might be a little older, but more experienced with less eyesight. But If you have your text on your image, and your image is this wide, oopsies, where am I, this wide on the screen, as soon as you go to a mobile, it goes down down, until you can't read that small text on your image [00:06:30] anymore. [00:06:30] Even with, I'm finding, even with reading glasses it's very hard to read, so that's the second reason why text on images, I try and avoid. It's perfectly fine when you want to send something out on a social post or whatever, and you can put the text in the status, but for websites, it's really important to try and avoid that completely. [00:06:51] There, there is the ability. And I, again, I like your suggestion of not putting actual text. into the [00:07:00] image itself and exporting the whole thing, unless it's obviously like a social post has got to be like that or something that that doesn't have a lot of text that even one shrunk will still be fairly readable. [00:07:16] There, there is the option, although I don't suggest doing it like this, I would suggest doing it how you do in being able to. Put in images in your site and when it [00:07:30] scales to mobile, you can use different versions of that image to display it properly. If you really want to control your image exactly how you want you can do that. [00:07:42] But again, it would be much easier to do it the way that you said. Okay. Yeah, that's true. There are always possibilities. There are always exceptions to the rule, but for instance, this isn't an accessibility thing. It's, it was more for performance optimization [00:08:00] SEO is people who have videos on their, in their hero section, you don't want a video loading probably in your hero section on your mobile. [00:08:10] So instead on the mobile version, you don't load the video, you load a static image of. That represents that kind of a thing, but why don't you want to put a video up there? I'll give you all the reasons You can but If the video is Large like you're trying to download that [00:08:30] video. And it's directly in your Your hero section. [00:08:35] So the first thing it's above the fold, right? So it's going to be loading You Right away. It's not going to be, loaded later when you scroll down the page or something. So you can't push it off until, you scroll to it a thing. So the initial load, I always tend to try not to have at least a really large video that. [00:08:56] Is at the top of the page that plays right away [00:09:00] on your mobile option. And that's another thing is that many browsers and themes won't support video in the header anyways, because it's just not a great idea. What Greg is talking about, if you've got something that's Large to load. That means that the time to see the site takes a long time and people will jump away from your site because they think there's something wrong or they get impatient or whatever the case is. [00:09:25] So you'll lose that traffic. And then the other thing I was going [00:09:30] to say about Responsive videos and having the mobile different than the the website is that you also have to take into account that what it actually looks like when it becomes responsive. So what I do on my, my Desktop is I will make the browser smaller, because you're going to get people at, I think a standard desktop is 15, but there's also 16 inches. [00:09:54] So does it go down for the 16? So does it go down? Sorry. So if you're doing it to, If [00:10:00] you're making it look good on a 16 inch screen, does it look good on the 14? Does it look good on the 13? Cause now there are 13 inch screens that are coming up with, I Apple. And then all of the tablets and then down to all of the phones, the big phones, and then they have. [00:10:15] around. So it can be a bit cumbersome doing that. But and yes. Okay, so I think I've just diverted us back to the first part of our I might have done that. Still good information. [00:10:28] What we were [00:10:30] talking about color contrast, and then you got into the image aspect and so color contrast, just to wrap up color contrast, I think people get the idea. But there are color contrast checkers on the internet. I can link those in our in the comments later on. And basically colors are scored as a pass or a fail. [00:10:51] And there's a double a or a triple a. And then so there's not a specific one point where once you pass [00:11:00] this, you're good. There is a range. There's a point where you could pass and it's like a double A, like you're fine with this, but you could be better with a triple A. rating, which is a higher contrast, but there is a threshold where you can go in between to get your color contrast correct. [00:11:20] And so there are a couple of other things when we think about visual. Because we're really focused on that right now. We'll get into other things a little bit later, but when it comes to contrast that's not [00:11:30] just about colors. It's also about patterns So patterns do very weird things to people's eyes and make it very hard and I think if you've ever looked at brutalist sites, which I think had a comeback I don't remember which time period but the brutalist sites not that long ago. [00:11:48] They were, I found them very hard to read because they were super bright colors, super intense colors. They were all around the same sort of tone of color. And then they had these things that were moving and these patterns that would [00:12:00] happen. And I found that very fatiguing on my eyes. So it works really well for industries that that sort of, are a little bit like mimic that feeling. [00:12:10] Like they're trying to get your attention, but they don't need your attention for a long time. Like maybe they're trying to point you to an art show or something like that. And it's really quick. That might work out really well, but you want to think about those patterns. I actually, there's a a yoga studio that I know and they've put patterns in behind their schedule. [00:12:29] So the [00:12:30] schedule or the schedule is black, Transparent and then right behind it is and it's nice It's these soft dots, but I can imagine there are people that can't read that. So patterns are the other thing You also don't want like really high cross high the same kind of stuff that they used to talk about if you're gonna be on TV being interviewed You know what? [00:12:48] You don't want to wear black and white stripes because it's weird, all that sort of stuff is the same. So your designer should really be helping you out making these choices and they shouldn't be putting these things before you. That will [00:13:00] be wrong anyways. But so this is really for the DIY folks out there. [00:13:03] You want to make sure that your, the patterns are nice and easy. And then on top of pattern images along the same, the exact same lines, I would say Patterns for sure, but any like super complicated images with a lot of shapes and detail just that are just all over the place, like the simpler it can be the better.[00:13:30] [00:13:30] Yeah, there's a great time to employ the kiss method. Yes. I just noticed on screen, my name is like directly in the center of the blue stripe on my shirt. I know, I've been looking at that. It looks like I'm wearing a Greg McKinnon shirt. You're wearing a Greg. We can. I know. I feel like I need, swear. [00:13:48] I'm really not. I'm not that potential . Alright, so the next thing that I wanted to address is, for a long time, small fonts were all over websites, like really tiny. I think they, they were like eight [00:14:00] point. I never really know what the point is on the website. Like what you choose for points, because it's quite different than what you do in Illustrator or a Photoshop. [00:14:09] What kind of. Font sizes, would you recommend for body copy, for example? Like I think everybody knows to make their titles bigger, but the body copy can sometimes be really small in an eyestrain suggestions. Try to follow the the rule of, what am I trying to say [00:14:30] here? What's the what's the grid? [00:14:32] The three, 3. 1, the golden ratio. Sorry. I try to follow the golden ratio to create most of my typography. So I will obviously start with the main body text, which I tend. Most of the sites I'm doing these days is about a 17 rem. All right. And sorry, 17 rem or 17 [00:15:00] point, 17, 17 point. And then from that point on, I will try as best as possible to create headings Going up from that based on the golden ratio for as optimal, design and visual as possible, sometimes it doesn't work out exact, but I do try to follow as much as possible that method to create my headings for the sites.[00:15:30] [00:15:30] Cool. Do you have a little chart or something like that, that you can share with us on the golden moon for font? I have a file that I have that shows what I typically tend to use. Maybe I can share what it looks like. Okay, cool. Then let's look yeah, I'll see if I can find something like that too. [00:15:50] Oh, I see. There's lots on the internet. Okay. So the other thing that bugs me the most, this is like a big pet peeve. For me is when the [00:16:00] borders are really quite narrow on the sides of the website. And then the paragraph is two or three sentences and it goes all the way from one side of the screen to the other side of the screen. [00:16:10] I find that so hard to read. Honestly, we could do columns. We could put a photo in, we need to change that up. You don't have to go all the way to the edge. Although I understand that lots of people working with templates and they're built that way, but. Move that padding in a little bit, please. Are you talking about mobile versions of Scythe? [00:16:28] No. Oh, is it [00:16:30] all Scythe? Yeah, so on the desktop mostly is where I find this. It's just such a long spans of space to actually get your eye across. And I think that probably has more to do with the fact that the person who was putting in that content is not. A designer and yeah, sure, putting in their content. [00:16:51] They don't consider those things. So yeah, for sure. Yeah. Or they're just using a text box. They've added a text box with [00:17:00] no formatting of the text boxes in. How it should go on the page. Yeah. So that's one thing that can be changed. And and just for the record, I have had designers send me designs with a full page text and I usually send it back, but designers don't save you from that problem all the time. [00:17:23] I don't know. I can't say. Okay, let's move on from the design stuff into some [00:17:30] of the more not important, more, not more important, but just as important things that are more code related from a code related side. And we have about 10 minutes. I'm just going to fire off a couple and then we can discuss them. [00:17:44] There's one that I know we talked about in our preview that you're going to get into but I wanted to mention there's I don't know how new they are, but there are ARIA labels that you can put [00:18:00] into your HTML elements that help with accessibility. Focus control is something that's big, and also the one that I know you will get into, the keyboard navigation. [00:18:12] Yeah. All three of those, I think, are Some of the biggest things for the accessibility on a site. Yeah. So when we're not thinking about most people will look at a site and be able to tell if it's accessible from that perspective, but they don't really think [00:18:30] about other people's disabilities and how that might impede them. [00:18:34] So for example, using a mouse is is difficult for a lot of people. And so what we want to do, and some people will have an adapted mouse, so they'll be fine or some other way to navigate on their touch pad. But one thing that we want to make sure that we do is organize so that we can tab through the website. [00:18:53] So tabbing is amazing. I'm going to put a site. That is a really good example of tabbing [00:19:00] and it's for actually a a society that works with people and to get them back into the workspace. So we'll give them a little plug too, by sharing their site. It's a site that we actually developed a number of years ago, in fact for them. [00:19:14] And for what we did was we may, you make sure that your tab. button works. So you should be able to put your cursor at the top of your site and then tab through and it should go all the through the menu items. And what it does is really neat. It creates a little [00:19:30] colored square so that the people that are tabbing can follow what they're actually what, which element they're actually on. [00:19:37] And it helps to do things like Get them through the site to the buttons where they can actually fill out forms or to get them to the fields to fill out forms or push buttons or just generally interact do pop ups to get the pop up information to come out without having to scroll. So that I love that for a lot of people. [00:19:58] And that's one thing that we don't think [00:20:00] about not everybody thinks about when we think about websites. And tabbing is a natural thing on, in HTML. If you hit tab, it will pop up. For forever. For as long as I can remember hitting tab, we'll basically tab through each link in order that they are on the site. [00:20:18] But even more, more to that, you can actually set a tab index order. So if you want if you want the tab tabbing to happen. [00:20:30] In a very specific way to make it even easier for people to, to navigate the site through that functionality. You can add the tab index attribute and specify how you want. To be able to tap through the site. [00:20:46] Can I just go back to one thing that we missed out that is super... /episode/index/show/0f00779a-4a64-4cf7-ba34-2cd575a50cc6/id/36315085

Is Your Digital Marketing Strategy Outdated? 08/01/2024

Is Your Digital Marketing Strategy Outdated? Is Your Digital Marketing Strategy Outdated? 00:00 Welcome & Introduction 02:15 Recognizing Outdated Strategies 07:30 Content Marketing: Quality vs. Quantity 11:45 Algorithm Changes & Their Impact 18:20 Analytics & Measuring Success 24:10 Embracing New Technologies & Trends [00:00:00] Hi everybody. We are here today. Geek Speak with the two pros in marketing, we left the boys at home today. But today we are talking about signs your digital marketing strategy is outdated and boy, do we have stuff to talk about. And if you are joining us today you'll know my cohort here. [00:00:25] This is. Rina Little from Littleworks Indie Media. [00:00:30] And I'm Pip Seymour Digital Media and together we make marketing a group effort. And we are here today to talk about how I have failed myself in my marketing because I got too busy and like the cobbler's children, I've screwed it up. So my marketing is no longer outdated. [00:00:50] But it was outdated. So we thought it was a great topic. And so Rena and I are going to ask each other how we would know if our marketing is outdated. So Rena. [00:01:00] Oh, that wasn't the exact question, but okay. So I wanted Pip to ask Oh yes, go ahead. You go try it. Let's see if you get it right. Let's see if you get the question on point. [00:01:11] If not, how do you know if you're marketing? How do you know if your marketing's outdated? Is that what you were going to ask me? Yeah, how do you know? Yeah, how do you know? Yeah, so I think we can wrap this up. You know when your marketing is not working if you don't get any sales. But there we go. [00:01:30] Oh, you've gone. [00:01:31] What happened? Wait, no, but it's not about if you make any it depends on your business. So if you're in commerce, then yes. But if you're a, another business, if you don't get lead, if you don't close the leads and sales different, right? That is true. E commerce leads and sales are the same. The same it's been the same action, but yes, you're absolutely right You do need leads in order to make the sales and marketing people are not responsible for closing up the leads [00:02:00] When all you gotta do is say pips, right? [00:02:01] Yeah. Yeah Except when the leads are low quality. So it's really important for your marketer person to have conversations with you and be asking you, what's your conversion rate? How are you handling that? And then also to know that as a marketer, I like to ask, what is your sales script like? [00:02:18] Are are you able to close, because those two things need to be Organized super well in order for the whole thing to work together so if i'm if pip's handing me the most awesome leads and I have [00:02:30] zero sales training I have No script that's organized for my sales people or whoever's taking those calls and i'm not on i'm not I'm just hoping that intuitively people are going to sell buy because I'm not a salesperson. [00:02:44] I don't want to be a salesperson. Then you're going to have some issues, right? Why is, I can see your lips moving, but nothing's happening. Cause I muted myself so that you were heard better. Oh, I see. We can't hear any of your background, so [00:03:00] you don't have to worry about that. I just get so excited and I'm like, I can do stuff. [00:03:05] I know it's true. So those two pieces are separate, but they have to play well together. And if your marketer is sending you lots of really, lots of leads and they are not good, so we did run a campaign offshore, an offshore campaign in another country that's what offshore means, duh. But if you send a if you do a campaign in another country sometimes the actions will be different. [00:03:27] For example, we ran one in the Middle [00:03:30] East where we got a huge click through rate, lots of bookings, but the people were not educated enough on what it was that we were selling in order to be able to make a sale. There needs to be an extra step put in place for that particular campaign. So you just have to know. [00:03:46] And then on the other hand, um, we had one, one, one person, when you've got one salesperson that closes a large per percentage of your leads, which was happening with another client. And then they switch that [00:04:00] salesperson goes away and then all of a sudden the sales drop, the conversions drop, then we can start to think about what's going on in the sales process, so maybe it's not a marketing, you have to look at the marketing and know what to look for. [00:04:12] And then you also have to know what to look for in the sales part to actually assess whether or not your marketing strategy is working. That's what I think so that's an interesting answer Because it's different than mine. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know where you are going And I think that what you're going to [00:04:30] say is going to be equally important to know too But but as a concept this is the space Be thinking about first. [00:04:37] And then how do you figure out? Where the problems. And I think that's where we're leaning towards. Next five, my five minute solution is not the end of the conversation. It is a really good point because why are we all in business? Yeah. If there's no money, there's no business. [00:04:54] I think that's correct. That's the thing. So we've got to keep that's why I was so we kill what we eat. [00:05:00] And in, so to speak, and it sounds so brutal. Can we find another metaphor for next time? Yeah, see, I think I'm on a recurring diet. If we're going to, if we're going to make analogies, but the reality is with my marketing strategy. [00:05:18] So what happened? So you asked me the question you asked me. Yes. How do you know when your digital marketing strategy is outdated? Yeah, so I think you're really right that it is all about conversions in the end. [00:05:30] But for me, how do I know my marketing strategies failed? I log into search console [00:05:35] Yes, go search console. Yes. And here are the tools to discover. Is it a sales funnel problem or a marketing problem, right? And here we go. And so it's really interesting because what happened with mine and is it a fail? Here's the thing. Okay, so here's what happened. I wrote this. I paid a lot of attention to blogging two years ago. [00:05:54] I wrote blogs. I was one of the first people to write about Google analytics for, I got [00:06:00] so far up in that, like I got on the first page of Google with some of my people I look up to, I was stoked. It was rockstar, but and, but then I wrote another article or one before that, and I picked the wrong keyword because I could never rank for that keyword. [00:06:17] So I could maybe. It's super, just the big players are in there. So it'd be really hard. And so let's just, can we just pause and explain one little concept for people who are new on this? Yeah. You know what I'm going to [00:06:30] say? So when you're choosing keywords, you want something that people are looking for, so it has to have a high number of searches, but you also want to make sure that the volume of material that's already out there in Is not ridiculous because and there are strategies to get around that. [00:06:47] So that's what we're talking about where, when Pip says that she, there was no way she was going to be able to rank for that. That's why. Yeah. So it'd be like in, in the ad sector, it'd be like competing with Walmart, right? Like [00:07:00] you're just, they're, they have a bottomless funnel. A pit of money that I, as a small business can never out, I probably could, but it'd be so for a long tail, longer tail keyword. [00:07:11] So what happened was there, Google does an algorithm update and all of a sudden all my impressions. So I showed up on the search engine results pages, lots of impressions, hundreds of thousands of impressions, not that many clicks cause I'm on page like a hundred. So slowly over time, over two years, it. [00:07:28] Went up. So [00:07:30] huge number of impressions, but no clicks. So my click through rate is off. So it's better that I don't rank for that at all. And I just start afresh. Because my, and what is you see instead of that hockey stick effect of going up. You see a tumbling down, and that's what I've seen in the search box. [00:07:50] Okay, so you said something that piqued my interest. So would you actually start with a fresh new blog with a brand new keyword, or would you attempt to adjust the [00:08:00] keywords in the current blog post to be a long tail keyword that might get you noticed for that sort of really narrowed down niche and just adjust the content on that particular blog post. [00:08:12] That's my question. Ah, that is a really good question. That brings up some very interesting information. So Google says is it about a single page or is it about your whole website? Does Google look at your whole website or the single page? Technically it is a single page, but when you come across such issues, you should do like a.[00:08:30] [00:08:30] Website quality audit, at least yearly just to find if you're with a good seo person I think, you're doing quarterly or six month or yearly quality assurance updates to try to, because our job is to just make it so clients keep getting leads and we have to figure out how to prove that it's us that is the bringing the leads. [00:08:55] Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. And so this is [00:09:00] the piece, this is the piece that I think is so under understood. So misunderstood. So actually misunderstood isn't the right term because once you get it. But so there's no misunderstanding it, but it's not understood at all. By a lot of business owners, I just handed over a beautiful new website. [00:09:19] We found so many problems on the on the audit that we did. And And implemented like the fixes for all of them and created a structure and a strategy moving forward. And [00:09:30] then they decided to take their website work in house with some people that are not really, don't have enough experience to run this. [00:09:38] And the reason why I know that is not because I'm judging people, but because their website had become so decrepit in such a short period of time that's the only and in the week that they've had their site There are, I got search console alerts telling me of all of the problems that have happened in one week of them having their site. [00:09:59] So it's [00:10:00] not a good idea to think that you can run your own website unless you are actually keyed in to SEO. If you are keyed into SEO, then absolutely have at it. But if you are just simply creating content constantly and updating your website with new content, that's only one part of the battle. And that's the thing. [00:10:20] It can really hurt you. So what most people do is they, Okay. Sorry. I only want to chime in because one of the things that we're [00:10:30] really seeing is with AI right? Or chat GPT. Everybody's so much content is out there now, but like Google's trying to discern because the one thing. Stays true, which is, it's not, it's quality of content, not just quantity. [00:10:45] Yes, exactly. But it's not even the content that I'm talking about. I'm talking about the simple idea of not creating redirects when you take pages down, like that's, that's the most basic and that's what I'm saying. That's what I've seen happening is that. [00:11:00] People just think that they can take away content and it's no big deal because it doesn't represent their business anymore and they don't see the bigger picture of how that taking that page away affects the little SERP that somewhere on the Google search results that you need to actually take care of that SERP. [00:11:16] So the content is related to that SERP and you'll always have to be thinking, where is that SERP and how are people going to find that link and where else have I put that link out in the world? And. Is it in a lot of places? If it is, then you're absolutely want to create a [00:11:30] redirect for all that. [00:11:32] We get hired now just to do that part because a lot of web devs will be like, no, I don't want to do it. Yeah. That's yeah. Job, isn't it? We'll do it. We'll get it done. We'll get it done. And that's what people need to know. So with the marketing, so being outdated, I guess what we're saying is if your sales aren't working, number one, so that's gonna be a huge indicator. [00:11:57] And then if you're seeing your [00:12:00] stats drop, right? Yeah. So declining in metrics. Yeah. And which metrics. So digging into the data, oh, my favorite. Yeah. So the one the thing that really gets me though is, and I think that probably a lot of business owners are in this position is that the big algorithmic shift that happened in March is still affecting people's results. [00:12:21] What I noticed in my clients and there's another agency clients that I looked at people thought that Google ads were stopped, had stopped working. They were not working [00:12:30] and they kept contacting their Google ads people. But actually, when you dig into the numbers, that the ads. [00:12:35] Click through rate and all of that hasn't changed really, but what has changed is that organic number, that organic piece that was helping boost, so your pieces organic and paid and they should be working together. So sometimes when it drops, it looks like the Google ads are dropping. So you really do have to unpack that and look at the numbers. [00:12:57] Like, where is that? Where was that traffic coming [00:13:00] compared over time? Where are you going to find that? So you're going to. So I was talking about search console earlier, this is Google analytics where you're going to dive into, to see that, because we've actually run across that problem too, where clients like, Oh my God, my leads are down. [00:13:13] And you're taking all of search. So all of the search engine market, we're only for them. We're only doing the Google ads. So I'm like, you can't blame me if I have no control over the. Yeah. You can't blame the apples when the oranges are [00:13:30] low. It. Yes. Yeah. And so we know that. [00:13:32] Okay. So inadequate online traffic and conversions. Really there, there's, that's good. What about quantity over quality now? Yes, it's why are we posting stuff? And what do you think about that quantity over quality, Rina? Yeah, I don't like quantity over quality because obviously I think that bar, you want to keep your marketing budget as lean as possible in certain areas and really Put the money where it's well benefited. [00:13:58] So a good [00:14:00] piece of quality content is much better than a whole bunch of posts that don't do anything. And when I say they don't do anything, I mean that they need to be organized, like people should be organizing their content pillars based on their sales goals. If you're, if your business goals and your content are not related and somehow, and I don't mean make sales on every post at all. [00:14:22] So please do not understand that. 20, 20 to one differences. And so 20 posts to one sales post, 20 helpful, [00:14:30] entertaining, whatever posts. I don't even put sales posts on my organic at all. I put all of my sales posts on ads so that I'm targeting the people that I want. I don't really care If my, if my friends and family who support me on my social media channels, if they get my sales posts, because they're not going to buy from me, but I do want to be connecting with those people who have who are in certain places down my funnel. [00:14:55] I want to be connecting that right message with where they are. And you can really do that [00:15:00] effectively on ads, not on organic in my mind. Okay. Thanks. Yeah, so quality over quantity is one thing and people get into this crazy sort of place where they read the gurus, and these people do make money because they're selling education products. [00:15:16] But but I don't know if they actually do what they say for their own sales funnel. I would doubt it. But. Yeah. So what what they say is you have to post so many posts every day. Especially they say on Instagram, I think is one of the [00:15:30] worst. You have to do five stories, how many reels and a bunch of posts every week, and it's it's a lot. [00:15:35] So I don't really feel like that's a good use of my time as a business owner, because I've not, I'm, I do get sales leads from Instagram, but, um, yeah. We don't use Instagram as a channel. We just, we're. I like Instagram. I like it too. I'm liking it more over the years actually. Yeah. I think Instagram can bring better results than Facebook organically speaking, for example.[00:16:00] [00:16:00] And even Tik Tok is so global. It's hard to really, um, I've never done ads on Tik Tok to be honest. But I'm talking organic. I'm talking organic. It's much easier to target my target market on Instagram, even organically speaking, based on the way that hashtags work on that, in that space. [00:16:19] So I'm pretty good with that. And I do get the calls, um, or the dms mostly. Okay. So that works. Interesting. That works for me. Not as often as other ways, but that's definitely one of my [00:16:30] channels that I pay attention to. But yeah, so qu quantity is not really that great because really quantity is like taking your little machine gun and going and hoping that something sticks rather than organic is to when I think of organic, I want one good piece of. [00:16:47] I want them to be organized to my content pillars. So they're super strategic. And then I want them to go out at certain times because I'm still, even though I'm global, I am global. I'm still primarily trying to [00:17:00] target businesses in Vancouver or for my organic stuff. And and then and then you want to make sure that content. [00:17:07] It gets the good content the ad content is where you put most of your effort into and most of the effort should not go into the Well, shouldn't, doesn't necessarily have to go into the content production, but maybe the content distribution. So that's where I put a lot of ad budget behind, I'm getting these Instagram ads all of a sudden. [00:17:26] Actually I get them on Instagram and Facebook for people, for [00:17:30] companies who do 60, 000 a month on Google ads. So I don't think they're targeting me very well. Do you know what I'm saying? They're not targeting me. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so I find that really intriguing. [00:17:44] So if you, and why I bring that up is because you can target people in so many ways on the ads that you can get so niche and that's really where the fun is. And when you get a higher click rate, it means that you're actually got the right [00:18:00] target and you're with the right messaging. And that's really nice. [00:18:03] So we had one, one campaign recently that had an over 10 percent click through rate on it, which I thought was really good. That's amazing. Yeah. One, one we got, so we, we lost a client a little while, I have to say it's a sad story for the client. Because they feel they got hosed, I think a little bit. [00:18:24] And we got, they got poached from us being, and it was a bigger company and it's gone all sorts of sideways for [00:18:30] them. But one of the things was that, uh, it will decrease their ROI. Like it will decrease their quality over quantity. And when we gave over the account, I looked at the click through rate and it was like, the conversion rate was great. [00:18:47] The click through rate was like 6. 84, which on average, if everything's running. Okay. You aim for a 2%, right? 2 percent conversion rate, the [00:19:00] higher the click through rate, the better, because it does mean the more relevant. Oh, except for we had a huge click through rate. I looked at. This client, when they came to us, they had a much bigger click through rate. [00:19:12] And it was really hard for me to explain why their way, why their result was better than my result. But it was because all of their, All of those click... /episode/index/show/0f00779a-4a64-4cf7-ba34-2cd575a50cc6/id/36315095

This Month In The World Of Marketing 07/25/2024

This Month In The World Of Marketing This Month In The World Of Marketing 00:00:00 - Introduction 00:00:24 - Marketing News Overview 00:01:01 - SEO and AI Updates 00:03:09 - Google's Third-Party Cookies Update 00:05:13 - Google Merchant Center Redesign 00:07:06 - Google Business Profiles: Changes in Messaging and Call Reporting 00:10:14 - Potential Paid Features in Google Business Profiles 00:11:17 - Google Ads Revenue Update 00:13:23 - Google Short Links Deadline and AI Sponsorship 00:14:46 - TikTok’s New Hour-Long Video Feature 00:17:07 - Instagram’s Multiple Audio Tracks in Reels 00:19:36 - Evolution of Video Creation and Editing on Phones 00:21:49 - WordPress Security Update 6.1 00:29:48 - Next Week’s Topic: Is Your Digital Marketing Strategy Outdated? [00:00:00] Hello there, it is the time again for GeekSpeak. And of course this week I am going to be playing the role of Pip. Because we have a pet emergency and so she is dealing with that right now. You may hear some pet noises in the background. Don't be alarmed. And yeah that's to be expected for this this moment. [00:00:24] My name is Bailin Lewis with Seymour Digital Media. And this week we are talking about the, what has happened in the world of marketing. Yes. And I'm Reena Little from Littleworks Indie Media, and we're also missing Greg this week. He is recovering from, he's recovering and he will be back probably in the next couple of weeks. [00:00:44] We'll see. See how that goes. He is fine by the way, all fine. And you can connect with him in the Facebook group if you're interested in doing so, okay. So Phelan, we've got quite a bit of stuff to go through. I think I don't know if you want to start or if you'd like me to start or how you want to do it. [00:01:01] Usually Pip tells us these things. Yeah. Our fearless leader. Yeah. So I think I'll start off with a couple of just SEO things just because there's some big change that's been happening in the there's supposedly a core update that's on its way. People are, so that's usual for every three months, they generally do a big core update to, fix what's been going on with search online. [00:01:30] People are expecting this one to be, fairly innocuous. Mostly it's of course going to be dealing with AI stuff because that also came out if someone found that as a. Subsection of the leak was that there's a whole rating system that they were going to use for their generative search and so that was a big one where they're labeling your content as like it's s a b d e and so they didn't apparently the leak didn't go into much detail what those characters like how they identify those characters But it just was that they do identify those characters about your website and it has to do with ai You and how they're going to use it in the future for doing searches. [00:02:16] so do you think we're going to have some more news about whether AI is fine or how to use it for websites? Because I know that whole subject is a little bit is a little bit misunderstood and there are a lot of different, a lot of different viewpoints on it. Do you think they'll be giving us any more information? [00:02:40] So I, it's a good question. The, biggest issue right now that they have is that they're like, they can't determine what's been written by person, what's been written by generative AI. Even if you just get notes from it, but so figuring out those parts as like shades of degree, the biggest one that I'm going to put my marker down on is that it will, the amount of money that they've invested into AI, it will burn out. [00:03:09] And with its figure to be within a year and what's what is going to burn out, so I don't know what it is AI systems like the actual code and like actual computing power that runs AI, is quite intensive and it's been apparently much more intensive than they originally anticipated. Yeah, so the amount of server time that it takes it just doesn't whatever they're charging us it's just not the value to Okay, that's gonna put a little wrench in the whole thing interesting it is on the flip side twitch still runs and it like people run calculations on how much twitch costs to run an hour and It the fundamentals don't make sense there either. [00:03:57] So I could be just proven wrong by some sort of expedience in the system, but like I would put a little bit of, my view is that I put a little break on it because it's, there's just like a lot of when people run the numbers don't look good. So speaking of that, one other big technical shift to the internet that got stymied this week is, if you like that transition, it's, the Google has backed away from doing third party cookies. [00:04:33] They were originally going to get rid of them and they were going to have a cookie less future, which I thought was insane and was never going to work because it's just you have a very simple solution and why are you giving this up to it's like reinventing the wheel. [00:04:50] Like you don't need to do that. You don't need to do this. And So they I guess they've just, cause originally they were going to put us all in a big pool and it was like a consent pool that then based on that, you would then get access, but it didn't make any sense. And so of course they're now backing away because it's basically reinventing the internet and it turns out that's harder than you would think. [00:05:13] Yeah. That's interesting. That's good. I like that idea that they're backing away. So that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Any anything else for the Google News? Merchant Center is got it's redesigned. So Merchant Center next is what it's called. So anyone who's any e commerce is now going to have it. [00:05:35] So I knew every new account that I'd send up for us are automatically switched over to the new account. Design and layout. But now it's being hauled out to every retailer that's on their platform. So what does that mean exactly? There's a couple of new features. It's mostly that it's like a, just looks different. [00:05:55] So it's just it's, just visual reorganization. Does it make it more user friendly? Yeah, I would say I like the new design over the old one. It's, it reminds me very similar to the, New Google ads layout. So go in there, they've got a new layout and most of the things are in the right spot. There's a couple, there's some new features that are in the merchant center that I can't name them off the top of my head. [00:06:24] It was more just Oh, that's there. Oh, cool. It wasn't like groundbreaking. I wasn't, I wasn't going to lose. Lose it over the new design and it's far less annoying than the new google ads design where they moved everything to just be A little bit off from where it used to be so you can't find anything. [00:06:43] That's not just the immediate like campaigns and ad copy so I mean I still count it as is this the best use of google's resources right now is to do redesigns on These platforms probably not, that's what we got. And so that's a big one. There's also going off that with platforms, taking stuff away. [00:07:06] There's going with Google business profiles is taking away messaging and call reporting. Yes. Yeah, that's I'm going to miss the call reporting. I think a little bit. I think that, yeah, that, that is absolutely a big one. Woffin like a misstep on Google's part. There's no reason not to do that. It's so useful for any like business to no. [00:07:30] Hey, I missed a call from this phone number. Would you like to call them back? It's yeah, to me, I'm like, it's a business owner. I would love to know that information and there's, it, that, that must cost them nothing to store that information and then report it back. yeah. And same with the messaging. I actually know a few businesses that have removed all of their social media accounts, for particular, reasons. [00:08:00] And then they were relying on Google business listing messaging. Like lots of people were actually sending, I could see, cause I'm an admin on their account, tons of people regularly messaging them to book appointments and to and to ask questions and to find out schedules and and they're moving that's going to, that's going to hit some people. [00:08:23] Pretty hard, I think too. Not everybody. I don't really get messages from Google business listing. Most people email me from there, but, but I'm sure there must be instance, lots of instances where that's going to be a hangup for people. Yeah I've totally feel you. I have not ever, it's basically like an eight, a 90, 10 kind of split. [00:08:49] 90 percent of my clients don't get any messages, but the 10 that do, they get a lot. Like it's weird. If you do, you get a lot of them. And if you don't like, yeah. And I get that they're probably thinking like in aggregate, but I would find that probably the intensity of the accounts that get those messages. [00:09:06] should be, should have been a weight waiting factor for them to be like picking what they were going to do. And yeah, I've got a couple of clients that I know it, it will, they, they just get so many messages on Hey, it's such and such thing available. Do you sell blah, blah, blah just like stuff that is innocuous and probably leads to a sale. [00:09:28] But for the most part, it's just like being in contact with your clients that it's just a quick one off. It just seems yeah, just a misstep, honestly, for Google to take away something that, compared to the amount of man hours it must have taken to redesign the Merchant Center, that would take a lot of effort to redesign that, and you're doing that, and you're rolling it out in stages, and you're testing it, and that compared to oh, we're just shutting down this recording. [00:09:58] It just seems yeah, I'm wondering I wonder if that's gonna become paid features. I feel like that might be when they, I know that they're developing business listing into a bigger thing and when they start to do that, that they may come, back as paid features. So we'll see what happens there. [00:10:14] 'cause it seems those seem like really good features for business to have. And and I would say that it I totally agree that would be great. And if it's like the paid version and you get a 10 bucks a month. And you get the reporting and the messaging and all that like for a business that was getting that before 10 bucks is probably a rounding error for the amount of sales the amount of leads that you're getting off of That's coming. [00:10:37] So I would say that to me feels like that would be the route I would go if I were them obviously i'm not google and they're you know I'm sure they have their own internal machinations on how these things get determined for sure anything else on Se or google No, those are the big ones on my end that were the yeah, the core update was a big one Oh, and also that apparently Google Ads The revenue off of Google Ads was surpassed expectations by 12 percent 12 percent Oh, that's pretty good. [00:11:17] That's pretty good during the apparent the apparently the market is downturned a little bit. That's pretty good. That's encouraging actually Okay, so I have a couple of little tiny Google things in 2018 Google had announced that it's short links G o g l Is being sunset. And basically the deadline is August 25th, 2025. [00:11:45] So this is there's probably not very many people out here who have used those links, but if you've got them anywhere on your social or website or, anything that you're putting out they need to be switched because they will turn not 404 error messages. And we don't want that. Do we Phelan? [00:12:05] No, no, one likes broken links. No one likes broken links. Especially not Google SEO, audits, they hate them. Okay. And Google has been named the official AI sponsor for the team USA at the Olympics. And obviously they've put some money into that and there, so you'll be hearing a lot about that if you are attending any of the events. [00:12:34] Oh, and the one thing that I found, this is just a, random fact, it's not particularly helpful to marketers at all or businesses maybe, but it's something to consider 45 percent of the Amazon warehouse workers were injured on prime days. And I thought that was quite a remarkable stat that I saw online. [00:12:55] Something to keep in mind. In mind when you're ordering on prime days, and I'm not sure what their health insurance is like over there, but hopefully it's decent. Oh yeah. Google's broad match is now set on by default in, I think that's an ad thing. The broad match? Yeah. So if you're not aware of that, then you might want to go in and check your campaigns or have somebody check your campaigns for you. [00:13:23] Oh, and this is my favorite one of the month, the, so we all organize our comments on Facebook. And if you are on Meta Instagram and Facebook, if you are managing your conversations if you're doing social media management. And some of those things, some of those strategies include like pinning good comments at the top and hiding comments that are maybe not so positive and dealing with them offline. [00:13:55] So it seems that they're going to get the AI, the meta AI machine to summarize the comments and. as the top comment or the one that you find at the highest point of your comments, which might be okay and might not be okay. As we understand that AI doesn't always get it right. So they might be adding in the negative comments as important if they come up Once or maybe twice. [00:14:25] You don't know. So that's gonna be interesting to watch. So watch for that. If anyone has seen that already, I would love to see a screen cap. I have not seen it yet. Just drop that in a comment so that we can see it. That would be, I would really love that, especially if you're in the states, which is where things often get ruled out first. [00:14:46] Yeah, so that might actually affect the vibe or the branding of your company in ways. TikTok has now allows hour long videos, which I was surprised to read in my notifications the other day. It was last week. It's okay, so we really are going and this really kills me. The idea that you start out with one thing, you've become known for one thing. [00:15:11] People love you for the one thing, and then you got to take on all the other things, and then all of the platforms start to behave the same. So I don't know if everyone knows, but, TikTok added photos. I think it's called TikTok notes. That's another. Addition to the to the, to the app that I mentioned. [00:15:34] I think I mentioned it last month and now they're adding hour long videos. So welcome to tick tock, Instagram and tick tock YouTube. And we'll see how that goes. There was a big kerfuffle about adding 10 minute videos and having them be the, or landscape orientation with nothing above and nothing below and how they're privileging that content. [00:16:00] I did quite a few of those and I didn't see a huge push on that content from my client account. And And I didn't see any ads. I, it had been talked about that. Maybe TikTok was going to put ads in that black space. But I haven't seen any of that yet. So I'm not quite sure what they're doing. [00:16:20] We'll see. And if you've put up an hour long video, let me know how it plays. I'm going to put up the first hour long video, I think next week on my account and see how that goes. And I'm really plowing through this. It's only 1116 and I've got one more point left so we can do, we can go back and unpack some of the stuff that I've brought up. [00:16:41] Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And Instagram is now letting users add multiple audio tracks to your reels. You can add up to 20 tracks in a single reel and once you add them, then you can turn them to include, to be included in the part that you want. So that's pretty interesting. I think that's going to change the vibe of Instagram a little bit and, it's going to certainly be different than TikTok. [00:17:07] So I guess that means that you can put up one, one, video roll. With one track, one video roll with one track, one video, one with one track. For example, that was one way I can see it being used. If you're going to use some, do some kind of mashup, that might be interesting. I can't really see how else that would work. [00:17:30] It seems that the audio files are. In sequence. They're not over top of each other. At first I thought it was over top of each other, but I don't see that as as being how they work again, I have not seen how the video, multiple video audios work because they haven't been rolled out on any of my accounts. [00:17:50] So if you've seen it. Put your comments in below. I'd love to hear if you can overlap the audio. Cause that could actually be fun. If you're doing things like soundtracks, like sounds, not music, not multiple music, like one music, one sound like with, with those funny little boings and, gongs and stuff like that. [00:18:14] And then you could probably also have a voiceover for that. That might be interesting, but let me know if you've played with that. Love to hear, about it in the comments below. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think that would, you could also work that as if you do those like joke voice overdubs, You're like playing a clip from a movie, and then you play a clip from another movie, and then the video is just you doing the overdub of it. [00:18:42] I think that could probably work as well, like in my mind, that would that would work well in the situation that you're actually creating. An original video, if you wanted to, and you're hoping that will go viral, that would work very well. If you're trying to go viral with sounds that you're dubbing from, that are already viral, then of course we would actually always stick to the original sound in, Yeah, that does make sense. [00:19:15] Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what these platforms as they're like, almost becoming D, DAWs, which are not something. Yeah, it's something I'm familiar with. It's those soundboards that they have in studios. It's called it's a digital version of that. So it's a digital, it's a digital audio workstation. [00:19:36] And yeah, it's almost like becoming one of those where you're like mixing different things in together. Actually, that's quite interesting because I do know people who actually make entire videos on editing, Music videos and other types of videos on I like short videos on, on editing platforms, it would be fun to actually create a whole video, do all the editing from start to finish for a short video or music videos and like that, that included all of those interesting, weird, a little things right in Instagram, instead of having to do it outside of Instagram and then uploading it. [00:20:12] And then it becomes a separate video. editing platform in addition to a social media platform. Yeah, especially if you have like actual real like fine grain control over like You know to eq something so it's like it doesn't like jump in audio quality from one to the other It's like it's you know If you have more control over that it'd be cool because apparently capcut is quite proficient for doing that kind of Yes, like audio and visual editing that I knew some people that I follow for like audio engineering and they were impressed with how much you can do just like, and it's on your phone. [00:20:48] So it's not like you have like infinite compute power and it still managed to do a pretty decent job, which is impressive for from like kind of a coding perspective of being able to give people all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I think there was, I had I had a contractor who worked with me, who created an entire video, music video from filming and editing and uploading on her phone in 2010 or 11 or sometime around that time we were working together, which was really quite remarkable at the time. [00:21:23] And and It was really interesting to see that done and how much further we're able to go now. It's like you pretty much have a studio on your phone. Yeah, exactly. I just realized, I think we did not... /episode/index/show/0f00779a-4a64-4cf7-ba34-2cd575a50cc6/id/36315105

When Hiring A Google Ad's Person, What Should You Ask? 07/16/2024

When Hiring A Google Ad's Person, What Should You Ask? When Hiring A Google Ad's Person, What Should You Ask? 00:00 Introduction02:11 Key Questions to Ask a Google Ads Specialist 05:34 Importance of Experience and Case Studies 09:00 Setting Up and Managing Campaigns 12:47 Understanding Tag Manager and Analytics 18:23 Avoiding Common Pitfalls [00:00:00] We are here today. We are talking about hiring. We're talking about Google ads. Cause it's a great topic. [00:00:05] And Rina and I got into this topic. Discussion about, what kind of questions should you ask a Google ads person and yeah, so take it over for a second. I'm going to make sure Rina introduce yourself. Thank you. My name is Rina Little from Little Works Indie Media, and we run a little agency in Vancouver, but I happen to be in Maple Bay at the moment. [00:00:29] Oh, [00:00:30] yeah, Maple Bay. And there is a user that asked us specifically to make sure they got tagged in the Facebook live. So their name is, if I could bring up my, I'll tag them up. They're going to be so disappointed if I don't tag them up, because I said I would. Give me one second. So Reena, You have a lot of Facebook clients or Google ads clients. [00:00:56] You do lots of ads, right? Yeah. [00:01:00] I do, it's true. And one of the, there are a couple of things that clients always come to me with, and, it goes in two directions and this is relevant to Facebook ads too. It's. It's they'll have tried Google ads. They may have even tried Google ads a couple of times. [00:01:19] They may have done it themselves. They may have had providers, but it hasn't worked. And so we get this. It doesn't work. It doesn't work for our business stance. And, [00:01:30] and that just makes me think a lot about it. In terms of what should you be asking your provider that you're, interviewing to find out and figure out if they're going to be the right fit for you. [00:01:43] Because, The Google ads only work if they are done by somebody who has experience and who has strategy and who understands and has can do them. And it's actually a really easy. Maybe [00:02:00] not so easy, but it's pretty, it's not that hard to get yourself organized to go through the program, take a couple of courses and hang your shingle out and say that you're a Google ads expert. [00:02:13] When the you're using the Google wizard or the Facebook wizard to set up your campaigns and or you're using the boost post. So I think that. Figuring out who you're working with is the first thing and what to ask for. So this is where we're [00:02:30] going. And the best example that I have for this, why this is so important is because I had one client come to me a few years ago. [00:02:40] And he had tried Google ads a couple of times. He had his heart set on social media. He wanted social media management. He thought that was going to be the thing. And and I convinced him to take a small Google's Google ads management package out with us. And I bundled it in with a bunch of other stuff that he was looking for. [00:02:59] And he [00:03:00] said, yes. And we grew his business online e commerce business from 55, 000 a month in sales to 125, 000 a month in sales in 12 months, which I was actually quite surprised about with a 500 ad spend, which is not very much, right? It's very little. That is the minimum we work with. And we never increased that ad spend through the whole 12 months. [00:03:23] And, and he just had somebody on his that he had hired or that helped [00:03:30] out that wasn't. That wasn't, good, quite frankly. And so you want to watch two things in my mind, and then you can tell me what two things you think. So for me, the two things, the two questions to ask for is for some case studies. [00:03:46] How long have you been doing it? Do you have any case studies? What have, you worked with? And if somebody answers really positively all the about all of the industries, then they're probably not telling you the truth because there's [00:04:00] some spaces where it's really more difficult. [00:04:03] So we don't get the results that I just described in every, with every client. And sometimes I have to say to a client I don't really know how it's going to work for you. I like to work with people for three months. I think that's pretty standard across industry to check out the Google algorithm that takes Google and your team about that long to get things optimized and running smoothly. [00:04:28] I say four, cause it takes a month to [00:04:30] set things up. Okay. Okay. Oh yes. No, the month of setup doesn't count. I don't count in that as three months of running the ad. So I, yeah, you're right. Yeah, so that's, I would agree. And then yeah. And then and then the other and, so if people tell you, yes, you can get remarkable results usually they're pulling your leg. [00:04:50] It's like the same thing as we can guarantee you're going to get number one on Google organic. It's, actually not, you, no one can tell you that, no one [00:05:00] can tell you that if someone tells you that. Yeah, exactly. So that's, those are indicators. Transparency is another thing I look for and that's our, or that I want people to ask and I usually talk about, and that transparency is about, how you're doing the setup. [00:05:18] Not necessarily the campaigns, but what type of campaigns you're running, what your keywords are, what the ads look like what, the text actually is for your AdWords [00:05:30] what images you're using. Cause some, I had a contractor that was running that I knew that was running. Not a contractor that's mine, but I saw a contractor running ads for clients where nothing was approved in advance. [00:05:43] The client had no idea what the ad said, what keywords they were targeting or anything like that was just a big mystery. And then in reporting. So in the setup some people, okay. So the, better quality providers will always [00:06:00] do, usually do tag manager, which is organized. To show the results in Google Analytics, rather than just using the analytics that are in, the Google ad space, because, the clicks on your ads doesn't really matter so much, the impressions shouldn't really matter that much. [00:06:20] They give you information, but if you don't know how to use that information, it doesn't really matter. So for a client, that shouldn't matter. What should matter are goals, your goals. And [00:06:30] usually you have a conversation with your ads person to decide what are your goals? Because your goals should really be organized easily to happen on your website. [00:06:41] They should also be goals that are congruent with your business goals. And that's a key piece that a lot of providers don't ask you what your business goals are. They'll just decide what you want and and they're not, able to tell you, you got this many calls from the [00:07:00] ads. [00:07:00] You got this many calls that were organic. You got this many calls, you got this many forms filled out through ads and of that information isn't particularly, isn't particularly, helpful, but you need to decide what is the information that's helpful. What are those KPIs and your provider should walk you through that. [00:07:23] Yes, a month is set up because we have so many clients to set up. So it's, you can do, you can usually squeeze it about two, [00:07:30] two weeks. We can squeeze it in. I can't hear you, Pip. Are you on mute? I can see your mouth moving. Yep. I got all excited. I'm like Such good questions, Ora, so let's get to those, but I agree so with the month set up and yeah, it takes a month because when you're talking to your client, you definitely need a strategy and you're not just going to bang up. [00:07:53] Also, Google ads has changed a lot. So the strategy you come up with, you talk to the clients about, you [00:08:00] agree because. location is a huge thing. And depending on how you're going to set up your campaigns, like you want a strategy you can build upon later. You want maybe if you're a cyclical business turn on and off things like you'll figure out really quickly. [00:08:17] If your landing page doesn't work in those three months yeah, Google ads is a long game. That's the thing is it's not a, like you can turn them off [00:08:30] and turn them on, but it takes about three weeks to a month to get the ball rolling. There's bidding strategies you have to use to anyway. [00:08:38] So it takes a long time. Your next question is, oh yeah. Oh no, Rina, no adding. Clarify, just to clarify some of the things that you said, Pip, when you say it takes, three weeks to get the ball rolling, we're talking not only about the manual things that we actually have to do to your account. [00:08:58] But we are also talking [00:09 :00] about the algorithm that Google uses to figure out who best to serve your ads to. So it is. It's a little bit longer learning than Facebook ads, for example. And and yes, when it comes to strategy, you have to book like we all, both of us book kickoff sessions where we actually ask all the questions and then we have to go and do the research. [00:09:21] And then we have to there is a process involved and if they're just it is possible to throw up a campaign and and do the research [00:09:30] without the client involvement. And a lot of. Google ads. People do work like that, but I just find that the results, no, it doesn't make sense. You need to work closely with your client because there are things like the negative keywords you want to go through with your client. [00:09:43] They're going to know their business way better than you are. So why would you make those assumptions? Also, you should get your ads approved because A second set of eyes can always find issues. That's where your branding comes in. If no one's got your [00:10:00] eyeballs on those ads, then you're letting somebody else, organize your branding for you. [00:10:06] And you should be, your Google ads person should be asking you for your branding document. So that if there's any words in there that you don't want used, so for example, especially in the, real estate space, nobody wants to use bubble in, their languaging at all. And Oh yes. Housing, whatever it's market, but I forgot what the term is, but, and there [00:10:30] are terms that you're, that your clients are going to have that you might not as a provider be aware of. [00:10:34] So they should be asking and all contractors should always be asking every single one of them for your branding document. I have a branding guide. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really important. It's true. Yeah. Google, the questions I think really revolve around types of businesses that I would, make sure to ask for Google ads. [00:10:54] Did you finish your two? I'm getting two things. The top two things I would say that [00:11:00] a, business owner or somebody hiring somebody should add would be what, kind of accounts have you worked with before? And along with that question, so it's still one question is what. Accounts do you not work with? [00:11:15] What type of businesses do you not work with? And the reason to ask that is because there's lots of rules in Google ads, like lots of rules. And if you're an experienced Google ads person, you will know what type of [00:11:30] businesses you don't work with. Because I can tell you right now I don't work with hotels generally because it's, I don't work with car dealerships because that's got its own Google ads, ticketing, booze. [00:11:43] Drugs, guns, all of those, we don't work with those. And the reason being is because we've come up again and again, come up against some things. The other thing to know is if somebody wants to try Google ads for 30 days, we say, no, we won't work with you because it won't [00:12:00] work. And it's the hardest thing as an entrepreneur to say no to money. [00:12:05] But when you know something's destined for failure, would you do it? Before you go on to your second point, because I know you've got a second one still, can we just answer Ora's question about tag mapping? Because I think that was a really important question. It's a really good question. Yeah. [00:12:21] It's tag manager is organized on your website to collect the data a little bit differently than Google analytics. And it funnels the information into [00:12:30] it, not funnels. It seg helps you segment the information better in Google analytics, and that's why you want to use it. So we use tag manager to set up for Google ads and for Facebook ads and for LinkedIn ads, and then everything is. [00:12:44] segmented beautifully in, in analytics and that's how it works. And then you can pull really nice reports from analytics that shows you everything so that you're actually looking at what happened on your site. So if Google ads tells you, and Facebook [00:13:00] ads tells you that you had this number of clicks to your website you want to actually see, did those clicks actually follow through or were they just like clicks and then. [00:13:09] Flybys, right? So sometimes people click and then they just move on. So you want to see what are the numbers of people that actually landed on your page? How long did they stay on your page? What actions do they take on your page? Those are the good solid pieces of information because with that information, you can actually do some really beautiful organizing of your landing [00:13:30] page. [00:13:30] And that's the next thing. Do, does your Google, person optimize your landing page? Within your campaign management, do they do that? That's a good question. If they don't do it, does somebody do it? Somebody needs to do that. Who's going to do it? Yeah. And we've come across that because we used to not do it. [00:13:52] But the thing is, then you have to depend on the client. That's right. And which is a challenge, right? And so we [00:14:00] use, we'll use lead pages. The other thing is so the landing page concept, when nobody can see anything else, so they're not distracted by the next thing they're going to check out like a blog or something. [00:14:11] So you do potentially want to treat it like Facebook ads. They go to a specific landing page. And that landing page might not be indexed on your website. To, go back to Aura's question, the tag manager, we do the same thing. Now we do a measure set up. And then at the very end of our measure set up, if people are doing Google ads, [00:14:30] then we add we add the conversion tracking there and we connect the Google ads and analytics account on both sides. [00:14:37] So from Google ads to analytics, then from analytics to Google ads, it's like a double connector. And and that helps us, you, Then you can make audience lists. You could do all these really cool things, but you can then see the, pattern. That people like, Oh, I got this much from ads as much for organic cause Google ads will not report as well anymore [00:15:00] because they've taken away the attribution model that used to be. [00:15:04] Now it's, their data driven attribution. So you have to use Google analytics to see the real results we've actually, the, some My next point of what to ask if you're hiring a Google ads person would be my first one was what accounts do you work on and then, and because you want to know if they're e commerce, they're, that's their [00:15:30] specialty, right? [00:15:30] Or if they're lead based, like if I want a form filled out and then the reporting, how do you report or better than that, who owns the account? I think that's, and that goes with the transparency because a lot of if you search, you'll see, have you ever seen search Kings? So they advertise for the States and Canada and there's, they have big pockets to do Google ads [00:16:00] advertising. [00:16:00] Cause it can cost some industries, a lot of money. So you want to ask them, they own the account though. So here's the thing. If you have a Google account with someone else and you're like, I don't want to do it anymore and they own it. You have to wait for them to close that account before you can open another account and wait 30 days? [00:16:17] Yeah, we argue about this a lot because here's the thing, campaign camp we never start with somebody else's account anyways. We always start with a fresh account because the setup is different. [00:16:30] Everybody has a slightly different approach to set up. And so working on somebody's account that has been running for ages can sometimes be messy, so we always start with a fresh one. It also gives an ads credit, generally speaking. So we like to do that. And we will, if people want to own their account we have that discussion at the beginning. I usually suggest that. That most most agencies like to start fresh anyway, so it's not no point, but [00:17:00] the reason is because I asked my guy this because I was trying to figure out why, because everything else we usually give over really easily. [00:17:09] But with the ads account, generally speaking, what ends up happening is we try and close it out and the client never comes in and, accesses it properly. And. Because there's a, there's there's a a step that they need to do that never happens and then it just leaves this empty account. [00:17:28] That's [00:17:30] problematic. Interesting. Yeah. Oh, and then, so sorry, we're different. We're different. So we want clients to own the account. We want to take them into their account. We want to teach them about Google ads, but Rina and I do this differently. You can really screw up a Google ads account if you go in and you're touching things or moving things or, You really want to but you can just give you access or just ask the client not to touch anything. [00:17:56] It is, I think it is theirs. So sure. [00:18:00] Screw it up. Pay me to fix it. Yeah. I'm not too worried about that. Our clients definitely see everything. We give them view access for sure. And we also coordinate with the rest of their team if they have other contractors that need to do something. Steven has a really good question there. [00:18:15] I think Pip, this is one for you. Cause I don't really know the seven day. Yeah, do you think the data attribution is better than the seven day that they had before? Which one do you feel has generated better results? I, we used to [00:18:30] use linear, so they, had different models. They had first click, last click and then they had linear, and then they had decay. [00:18:37] Oh my god, I can't believe I remember all of them. Time decay. And it's, so it's just what they measure, and we always pick linear. Which, but now they took away all of that and now you get to do the data driven. So seven days, the attribution was in the seven day one. I said, I don't remember seven day attribution model. [00:18:56] Cause we always picked linear. [00:19:00] Do I, I don't, I like control. I like having a little, and so it's funny every time they take away some control, you can see Google the Google company makes more money. So they want to be like Facebook. They want to be like, no, you get nothing and just give us money. [00:19:18] So I think that's funny. Good question. And Oh, what was I thinking? There was something else that came up about service providers and what they do. We were talking about, [00:19:30] okay you Oh, you want me to go? I got so many, I forgot what I was going to say. So I would also ask how how do you strategize? [00:19:42] To get the best campaign because the secret of secrets to Google ads is the foundation matters. Yeah. What you do and maybe this is why you start a new account each time. I like, I'll pull all the data I can get off there. If [00:20:00] you see their account and it hasn't worked at all, then it is smarter to set up a new account because you can get that, that 600 that whatever they have, you get 1, 800 now if you spend 36. [00:20:15] Yeah, you need to remember. So the other thing that you want to make sure you're doing and this was really tragic. I have an older client, like elderly client... /episode/index/show/0f00779a-4a64-4cf7-ba34-2cd575a50cc6/id/36315110

Mobile Matters: Your Customer is On their phone 07/12/2024

Mobile Matters: Your Customer is On their phone Mobile Matters: Your Customer is On their phone 00:00 Introduction To The Podcast 02:11 Making A Blog Post Mobile Friendly 05:34 How To Convert Traffic & Why Mobile Matters 09:00 Mobile Specific Errors 12:47 Mobile Optimization 18:23 Types of Page Speed Test Pip: [00:00:00] Now, who wants to have a conversation about mobile marketing? Hi, Tim! Hi! It's Phelan and I today, so Pip, Seymour Digital Media, Phelan, what, Fuzz Marketing, Phelan, Seymour Digital Media? What's going on there? Yeah? Phelan: It's still the same, yeah. Seymour Digital Media. Yeah. Pip: Look and I've dressed up a little because we're going we're going to a good meeting after this with one of our best clients, so I'm very excited. But, in between then and now we're talking mobile marketing. Sorry about the hiccups. And the hiccups with the live, we figured it out. It's cause I was testing zoom yesterday with Ecam and I'm almost perfect. Phelan, like our names are so close to being like, even, but let's get into the mobile marketing. I got a whole list of things we want to talk about. So Phelan is a stand in for Greg because Greg got Caught in traffic I think, and so we didn't want him on his phone driving. We were trying to be all cool. Yeah. Phelan: Yeah. [00:01:00] We don't want to, you don't want to do a live while you're sitting in your car. That's not preferred. Pip: No, especially without air conditioner right now in BC right? So I've got my handy dandy notes up and because we do search engine marketing and Greg does websites and Phelan does websites, we've a lot to say on the mobile, mobile first issue. Phil, and maybe we can look at this like a standpoint. You have the standpoint of like the SEO and I'll do Google ads or we'll just switch back and forth. I have a number of things I want to get to Google with its mobile first indexing. And so I want to talk about ads and SEO. You're going to do more, of the knowing the website stuff. Cause I have an issue sometimes when I go and I make an image and say the image Text in it, which is, something I might have because we do SEO and I like numbers. When I go and add that to a blog post, a lot of the time, like if I don't check it on a mobile phone, it looks like [00:02:00] crap. If then, two weeks later, go look at it on a mobile phone. Do you, is there an easy way as a user that someone can make sure it's a 100 percent accurate? Mobile first, when I'm adding stuff to my website. Phelan: Yeah. So most like Shopify, WordPress, they now have a preview button in the top right hand corner. So you usually see it set up by default in desktop mode. And so you could easily switch to mobile and see how the spacing works with like your images and make sure to like your cutoff points, like you. You generally want to have if you got a big landscape picture, that you have all the important stuff in the center, so that if the other stuff gets cut off, that it still has it's, that's the rule of thumb that I would go with. You can, Shopify makes multiple copies of your images, like 26 different copies, and so it'll insert the one that's correct, but they'll still do cutoffs and stuff like that as well, so that's just something to keep in mind. Yeah, nowadays it's a lot of these website builders have a default like, Hey, do you want to see [00:03:00] this on mobile? And then you can just easily switch over and so you can get a really good feel for it without even having to whip out your phone. Pip: And why do we want to think mobile first? Phelan: Like you said at the top if you're doing SEO, you want to be looking at making sure it's optimized for people on their phones. You'll go through the analytics. I haven't seen a website. I think there's been one or two that have, That are very B2B, but most of the time, if you have any sort of like end user, or you're bringing in like lots of traffic, you're going to get at least 50 percent of it's going to be mobile. Pip: At least, and we're seeing, so I think it's, I think it's a new, really smart strategy to focus on mobile. Because the most people have their phone in their pocket. Most people go from their phone to the computer. How many people have their phone sitting right by them? And phones convert better as, as well. Phelan: I would also say that there's an unintentional side effect of focusing on mobile [00:04:00] first, which is that phones aren't as powerful as desktops. So if you're optimized for a phone, you've already by default optimized for a desktop because like the speed and loading issues that are going to be ranking factors and user experience. And that also goes to the ads because it counts as landing page experience. So all these things, if you optimize for mobile, you're in. And unintentionally optimizing for the whole website overall, because you have to do all these extra things to make it run very efficiently, which is a good thing. We want that. Like you want the end user to have a fast loading, even on mobile website. Pip: It is true. And we see it like if it's, that's such a good fact. So if everybody actually, we should drop the everybody probably knows, but the speed test from Google, that's where you go, and and you. Test it, it'll give you the desktop, I think, back first, which is really funny because if you actually optimize for the mobile and get that solid in and out of the way, and this is where we see most problems, right? Is the [00:05:00] loading of websites and the load, even in Google ads, we'll stop doing your Google ads, your pages don't load, right? Cause you're just wasting money. And so it will give you the competitive advantage to think mobile first. And we're not talking today about Hey, Shoot people a text for advertising. I'm not the biggest fan of that. I don't like even getting reminders for text. Text is I don't know. I just keep it a little less dingy. It's always dinging. So we're not talking about that today. We're talking about how to convert traffic and why mobile matters and how, if you want to win with your marketing, how you should be thinking about it from a search perspective, of course, I think it's pretty searchy. Phelan: Yeah. Yeah. I would say that it's it's definitely worth it to think about it as well as like your conversion rate optimization stuff. So once they're on the page that you have things ordered in the right way that because like in desktop, you can let yourself get too busy. like too smart by half and then make it too busy. Whereas mobile is you've got to be pretty clear [00:06:00] and get people through a land on their on a page on their phone. You want to get them from point A to conversion as quick as you can. And so making sure that you've optimized for that as well will be beneficial for you in the long run of how to Optimize your website and get it to convert. Pip: Especially if you have like automatic things set up in your phone, you're just, or or a human has their automatic things set up on their phone, right? Cause you could instantly fill things in. Some people can instantly pay for things like it, and it just helps from every angle and from a perspective where if you're, so I think. Speed is the most important. That's what we'll say. I think, and from a Google ads perspective and a conversion rate optimization perspective, phones convert better and more people have them. Lots of people don't have computers, like older people might have iPads. It's all right. So yeah. And then there's a mobile first content so shorter paragraphs, more bullet points, clear headings. So the same thing as SEO. [00:07:00] Like that you want on your page. And then many mobile search searches, this is local SEO, right? Have local intent. So if you're a local business I would definitely be focusing on this. And checking everything. Like every time you update your website, check it on a phone and we all forget. Who doesn't forget, it's funny cause I, we do check it now all the time, but I don't think even with clients, it's something that I think we need to train ourselves to do more and more. Phelan: Yeah. Yeah. And I would say as well to trade to look at it on multiple devices, you can inspect element and then it will let you cycle through different types of devices to see how they all interact. Pip: Ooh, one day we'll be able to show people that because I'm working on my Skittles with video, right? Because I can be like, I'm talking now. And then I can be like, Oh, I'm talking again. Phelan: Yeah, let's not. We're back. Pip: We're back. Sorry. Got excited there. Got excited about showing my skills, but where were we? We were talking about mobile, and what were you just saying, [00:08:00] Phelan? I'm so sorry. Phelan: Yeah, so I was saying that with yeah, now I've actually lost my train of thought. That's okay, I got, Pip: yeah. Phelan: Talking about inspecting element. And so that's another way that you can test it's a little more advanced as a feature, but generally nine times out of 10, if you just use one of those preview mobile it's still, it's worth it to check on a phone because sometimes how the preview on mobile renders versus how your phone actually renders it, not always. So it is still good to have a backup to check those just in case, because they do render sometimes a little weird with like mobile browsers and stuff like that. They they're not a perfect, what your desktop is trying to imitate is not always a perfect reflection of what's actually in the real world. Pip: You want to check your phones, your friends phones. Other people's phones fail and I both have different phones. We work together and so we can see differences. That was on purpose. But it is interesting because no matter what you do, it might be off somewhere, but if you're optimizing for it Then it'll work out better. There's [00:09:00] like mobile specific errors on say Google search console failing. We're going to see things like blocked JavaScript. Is that right? And CSS issues, right? Image files. And so those things, if we optimize for those. I think it'll make our phones better. No, you know this, but I like block JavaScript. You can, you got to explain that more. Phelan: So yeah what happens is so JavaScript, which is like how you interact with it, you click a button, the button does something that's all done through JavaScript The images is the other one. So images, yeah, we definitely, we've talked about that. You want to have them optimized, but for the JavaScript, one of the big ones is that I've noticed is Chrome. We'll just straight up, not render something. Cause it's yeah, that was a lot of work and we don't have enough bandwidth. So we're just not going to render stuff. Which is, what does that Pip: mean? Phelan: It means Oh, this function was going to take up too much compute power. We're just not going to run that function. And so that's why [00:10:00] when I talked about at the top of optimizing for mobile and like getting a lot of that heavy work and making sure you don't have like extra plugins that are just bloating your website, you don't have extra code on there. That's again, the PageSpeed Insights will tell you a lot of that. It'll say Pip: people look at those, but people look at the page speed insights. And they look at it and honestly it's pretty overwhelming. It starts with the first paint and the second paint and, people don't even know what paint is , yeah. So it's hard for a regular user. Phelan: Yeah, it is. It is something that's gonna be a little more technical, especially in fixing the issues. It's go, it's not. It's not as simple as resizing an image and it's just like you resize it and you're done. This is much, a little more complicated but it's well worth it again, because the faster you speed up your phone for mobile where it helps across the board. Cause your desktop's also going to get those improvements. Pip: And so Phelan: I think that's good. Pip: That's a huge win [00:11:00] right there in and of itself. We can close the podcast now we've done it all. Said all the things. Yeah. . Yeah, that's fair. But with I think there's also, I also learned some information about email opens it's more likely that people read e email newsletters on their phone. I don't read email newsletters often I read, I'm on my desktop a lot. Yeah, but I am going to start I think we're going to be implementing this strategy ourselves. Because not only do more people have phones than have computers, but if we focus on mobile first for all that we're doing, we know it converts better on ads, which means overall, if you do mobile first, I bet you'll convert better, right? Phelan: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Pip: Yeah. We should test that. You can see in Google Search Console mobile devices and what's going on there. You can do page speeds tests. You can look in Google Analytics and you can separate out your traffic. You would segment it, right Phelan, to look at [00:12:00] mobile and look at the comparison. Phelan: Yeah. In the new system, the way they've laid it out, it used to be that you go to a tech tab. But now what you would do is I would. Go to reports and then acquisition and then traffic acquisition. And so that shows you the traffic and then just above, there's a plus icon in the, just above the names of each of the different platforms. So you can put a secondary filter and that filter can have tech. Interesting. So you can do I've got, for my Google organic traffic, I've got 60 percent desktop and 40 percent mobile. You can start to see that and see it by the different channels and then see how you're, You want to be optimizing for each channel, or maybe there's one that's bringing you a lot more mobile traffic that you weren't anticipating. Pip: So this is where the data driven insights really do help and affect everything we do. And is, I think, when you get right into the nitty gritty of this, Optimizing things for Google ads or [00:13:00] SEO. You're in there looking at this type of data, right? You're cross comparing. And there are so many industries and so many businesses that have done marketing that we can learn from what they've done. So finding industry specific things like what converts better for. Say coaches like and do mobile convert better like I know people test longer and shorter form. Everything's a test but when you get to go and try to optimize for this specific thing and if it could the knockdown effects That can help it. If you optimize for mobile technically, I think you're also optimizing for voice right Phelan: there. There's gonna be a lot of the best practices that'll make it easy for all those systems. Sorry about that. . Pip: It's pressing buttons. Say that again. Phelan: Okay. I was gonna say that 'cause going back to your earlier point of like you're talking about semantic, HTML, basically laying it out in a structure that's easy for. Systems to read it and then in and [00:14:00] digest the information and so that's going to be good for crawlers whether it's like voice content or pretty much anyone the easier you make it to read and to analyze the easier it's going to be for someone else to share that information because that's just Kind of the way these callers work. Pip: And when you look inside like Google Analytics, can you see, can you look at a phone and then the pages they land on, can you do the whole path? Can you look at the whole path and segment? Phelan: Not anymore. That's one of the reports that people were really hoping was going to get brought over, but it wasn't Pip: Analyze and measure the way we want to measure on mobile devices. Wasn't that the whole reason? Phelan: It was designed for apps. And so the apps would have specific events of login screen reached payment screen reached. Um, like it would have it as the event would be the page that they make it to. Pip: Okay. Oh, okay. And So you'd think it'd be all [00:15:00] mobile first and they'd give us as much data as possible. Who am I kidding? They try not to tell us some things, right? Phelan: Yeah, it's one of the more annoying reports that they didn't create was like each step. So you could see if maybe there's a drop off so you do landing pages to completion. One of the pages that they see along the journey, they don't really tell you that information. If someone does know of how to get there. Report then feel free to let me know in the comments, but I haven't found Pip: it. New things show up there every day. Phelan: This is also true. Yeah. Pip: Which is exciting. And so the whole thing with Google ads is that we want to, and with SEO is we want to help people make purchases faster or get the information they're looking for faster, right? And if they're on their phone and yeah, we're going to have such an easier time of it. The thing is, it is hard. To optimize for a phone because it is hard to speed up your website, right? It is a lot of technical stuff that the regular Joe can't do and not like you have to be a [00:16:00] technical SEO to keep plugging away at it And there's some things in there that aren't great. Like the number goes up and down Phelan: Yeah, and also that, uh, in this current age, there's actually a lot more resources for how to do stuff. So I just helped out someone else yesterday that we're consulting with, and they were asking how do I speed up the website for mobile on Squarespace? And sure enough, there's a, I typed it in and they had a help doc on going through here's a list of things you can do for Squarespace that will help you speed up your website. And they were all reasonably easy things for anyone. Yeah, they were simple things to get done. I wouldn't say that they were gonna, yeah, they weren't revolutionary. It wasn't like you were having to write JavaScript or anything like that. It was more kind of all the things we've been talking about. As well as some setting things that you wanted to have checked off in certain ways. And but that tells you that Wix and Squarespace and Shopify, they all have like ways that you can speed up their websites. And you gotta play by their Pip: rules, right? So here's the thing. [00:17:00] You get a Shopify site or a Wix site or Squarespace sites and you're like, oh, okay, I don't have to worry about images. And you just upload images, but they actually have image size recommendation, even though they size them down for you, but you, a lot of people go over that anyway, right? So we spend a lot of time fixing the weight of images. Phelan: Yeah. There's still that. It's still a function of limitation on the speed of light, right? Like at the end of the day if the website's load is determined by how much like bits can go through the internet and Like the more you could do to reduce those bits that are going through the better It's gonna be especially for mobile phones that are you know? You're on a 2g network for a little bit because it's You just happen to be shifting between two towers. And so you got to be thinking in all those different use cases as well. Pip: Yeah, we did have the experience a few days ago of one of our team members downloading Screaming Frog. And the next day it took the [00:18:00] next day it was very strange because they said to us basically, Oh my God it's taken a day and I was like that's weird. And that's when I call you in failing. And that's when we checked it was the. Speed of their internet connection. That was... /episode/index/show/0f00779a-4a64-4cf7-ba34-2cd575a50cc6/id/36315115

Google Ads What You Need To Know 07/04/2024

Google Ads What You Need To Know Google Ads What You Need To Know 00:00 Introduction to the Podcast 01:23 Understanding Artificial Intelligence (AI) 03:45 Ethical Considerations in AI Development 06:12 Applications of AI in Healthcare 09:30 AI in Business and Automation 12:15 The Future of AI: Opportunities and Challenges 15:40 How AI is Transforming Education 18:05 Conclusion and Closing Thoughts [00:00:00] Hello, I'm back in an original seat and we are here for the day. Okay. For the moment, we're talking Google ads, 2024 today. So if you're joining us, pipe in, if you use Google ads with a yes, and if you don't use Google ads with a no, and this is. Phelan, I work with Pip who forgot to introduce herself and but we work together at Seymour Digital Media and we spend a lot of time thinking about Google ads. [00:00:27] So we thought it'd be a good time to take, I [00:00:30] think after in the wake of the Google IO for this year where there was a lot of changes, I think it was good to talk about what's going on with the big. Themes and the big trends that are happening in Google ads, right? So Phelan can you share this over to the group just to make sure that it gets in there because there's no Yeah, that'll go in with it and yes, so We do get on here weekly and yes, I am Pip [00:01:00] and together Phelan and I, we run Seymour Digital Media and Know How Marketing Lab, which is our school, the digital media, which is our agency. [00:01:09] Now Phelan we do a lot of Google ads. Yeah. Yes. A lot. And it's really changed in the last year or two, would you say? It does some big jumps every year, I would say. Yeah, I would say it's more crystallizing a lot of trends or solidifying a lot of trends that have been ongoing in Google Ads for a while. [00:01:29] [00:01:30] Now we have a whole agenda today. So we want to go through, I'm going to list it off the headings quickly, and we'll try to get to all of these today, but we're going to talk about Google ads and how it's changed with deprecation of third party tools. Then we have first party data and we have AI integration. [00:01:48] I know you guys are super excited about all this and we have the new Google ads design performance, max enhancements, expanded search ad experience, which is interesting. There's some video changes [00:02:00] and bidding strategy changes. So I think first and foremost, we'll do the cookie stuff cause that's hard. [00:02:06] And then I think we should jump right into the interface and how it's changed and why we're. Doing a Google ads course coming up. Yeah. So yeah, I guess the, so cookies, it's a big one. It's already happened for Facebook. So it's the same principles. It's a, basically they want to have it they want to have it set up like a conversion API. [00:02:27] They don't like having the third party tools because that could be a [00:02:30] privacy leak. So what do they mean by that is basically you have JavaScript that's on the page itself. And so when the page loads, Yeah. It actually reaches out to a third party with the script and then grabs the code. And so what they want is you to have it already connected on the backend. [00:02:45] So when the page loads, the Google ads conversion tracking loads with the website itself. So it all looks like it's coming from one source, not that someone's added an extra bit of code. That's going to be doing stuff stuff. And so that's the idea behind it is [00:03:00] that it's show, it's Verifying to the browser and the user that, Hey, this actually loaded from this person's website. [00:03:07] So it's first party. Okay. Okay. So if I have Google analytics on my website, that's first party. If you set up Google analytics in the traditional way, then no, it is not first party. It's the traditional way is to paste it into the head coat. Okay. And that's third party because it doesn't load when the webpage loads it. [00:03:29] [00:03:30] It's a code that. Fires once the page is there so it means it puts in everything for the website And then it makes an extra call out to Google Analytics to start firing the Google Analytics Okay, so if I put it through tag manager, is it third party? That's still third party. What you would need to do is have some sort of So if you're on WordPress, there's a pixel My site is one that I've used for Facebook pixel, but it also has an analytics input [00:04:00] Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager integration. [00:04:02] So that's how I would set that up. And so what they do is it's basically it's a simple plugin on the backend. And all you do is load in your Google Tag Manager ID or your Google Analytics ID, and then it just loads it for you as if. It was loading with the page itself. Yeah. So this is how we do it. [00:04:21] Yeah. If you're doing something like Shopify, they have the conversion API already set up out of the box because [00:04:30] you add it to your store and then it's just a function of your store. That's actually loading this information. And yeah it's, it sounds way more complicated than it is, but basically you just want to have something that does conversion API for Facebook and see if they have a Google analytics component and then you're good. [00:04:47] Okay. That's something to note for. And so when you're setting up Google ads, one of the things you do, or one of the things we do is we set up conversion tracking, because if you're doing Google ads and you don't have conversion tracking, you [00:05:00] can't track the leads that are coming in, right? And this is what we see with business owners or, and businesses they'll have done or tried Google ads, but they won't have done this, the most important part. [00:05:11] And that's because it's probably overwhelming and confusing. Has Google made that any easier with this third party cookie, first party cookie stuff? I don't think Google has made it easier. I would say that I had just hopped off a call where literally that was the case with I was asking. This contact, [00:05:30] I was asking him if he had ever run Google ads and he said he did and then just told me, Oh, they weren't very good. [00:05:36] I don't think I got a lot of return. And then we talked about are you tracking things correctly? So you can actually show where things are coming from and how these are connecting. Google. Still leaves a little bit to be desired for business owners right out of the gate to get the most out of it for them. [00:05:53] Not to say it, so yeah, it could be, they could do a better job on Google side of explaining what a [00:06:00] conversion is and how to set it up. Generally though It's like Shopify and WooCommerce that are generally pretty good because that's the bread and butter is to give you an ROI. And so they help you tie those things together. [00:06:12] But generally, yeah, there's no really good out of the box solutions that I've noticed. Even ones like say a Squarespace and they do all the forms and they do all of the and you put in the Google Analytics in their system. They don't, Spit out a, an event saying Hey, contact form filled. Which is weird that doesn't they, [00:06:30] don't they? [00:06:31] No, I haven't really yeah, they do for some, but like they do for forums being submitted. But there's there again, there's some parts of it to be desired that I feel like that websites, especially if they're hosted by someone else that they could help you with a lot more. Okay. And then let's, okay, so let's dive into the interface. [00:06:54] Cause I think that's pretty interesting. And one of the reasons we've decided to do our Google ads course, and then we can jump back into [00:07:00] the AI integration and things like that, the new Google ads design. So Google was testing a bunch of different designs and they found a winner. [00:07:10] I always say chicken dinner. I'm, that must be from a commercial, I'm sure, right? But they have this winning design and they've taken everything that was, you On the top of the dashboard on the right hand side to the they've made it on a horizontal dashboard on the left hand side now, instead of [00:07:30] a vertical, no, they've made it a vertical dashboard on the left hand side and it used to be a horizontal dashboard across the top. [00:07:38] Like a menu. Yeah. I think that's how they chat. And they've added some interesting little things in there that I don't think anybody's really mentioned anywhere that I've seen so far, but they have, how we have, so in Google ads, one of the major strategies we, we do is we work with our clients to look at the search terms that come in and see if we want to negative them [00:08:00] out or add them. [00:08:00] And we do this with the clients as often as possible. And But they have a new list. So we have a negative keyword list, which is now called I forget. It's not called it's called egg exemption list or exclusion list. Yeah. exclusion list. And that's the exclusion list. [00:08:21] You can negative out at the campaign level, right? And you could add all your campaigns, which you would assume would be at the account level, but it is in [00:08:30] fact at, they have a negative a thousand negative keywords you can have at the account level. And so anything you never want to show up for, but you have to go to a new place, which is when you're setting up the Google ads account, or when you've set it up, you just go in there and add it. [00:08:47] And there it's a, it looks like a regular campaign, the regular campaign settings, only it's for the account. Section it's down the admin. Which is, so that's a new feature we're [00:09:00] seeing. There's also, and the interface is a little bit different instead of just the wrench icon. It's a wrench and it's a wrench and something else pliers, scissors, something. [00:09:09] So now you can't just say at the wrench icon. Yeah. You got the tool settings. They look like tools now. And, yeah I find the new interface to be annoying in that it's like the uncanny valley where things are just off, just enough to be annoying, where you expect, most things are where [00:09:30] you would expect them to be, but there's like some subtle differences on Oh, it's actually, you go under this folder to get this, or do they renamed like accounts, linked accounts to be data manager. [00:09:40] Yeah. But they never like told anyone that there was no, Oh, where's that? Where you would have connected your Google analytics with your Google ads account, it's now called, it's now called data manager. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Which it's fine that they did that. It's just, I wish they had, I [00:10:00] wish they had told us more about it because like they made a big deal about how they were changing the login screen for Google and then, but they didn't even tell us like any sort of. [00:10:09] Advanced knowledge about Hey, we're going to rename all these features to these things. Big, have a blog post written up about this is now this, or if you want to find this, it's out here which would have been very helpful. And I think was a missed opportunity for Google to make it easier if they wanted people to get used to this new interface. [00:10:25] Yeah, it does. I, we'll get used to it. So when change is hard to accept. So [00:10:30] do you think that possibly you don't like it because change is hard, right? I'm used to one pattern of doing things and they've decided to change that pattern, but not really tell us that they had changed the pattern. [00:10:42] That's what I find annoying. Is that I'm okay if you say, Hey, we're moving these things to here. You can, it used to be called this, now it's called that. At least if they told me, then I could go, okay, update, like how I go through the system, but if you just don't tell me, and it's just there, it's just Oh, guessing game, guess where it goes. [00:10:58] And you feel dumb, right? You go [00:11:00] in there with a client. You're like, Oh used to be there and now it's got a different name, which is, normal and. We've learned there's always things to learn in Google ads. You're always going to be learning if you're in Google ads, because they'll add new things or because you work with a certain type of clients, you're not going to use some elements and vice versa. [00:11:18] You learn. What you're allowed to do, what you're not allowed to do as you go through it, even if you take the Google ads test, which is interesting. So the interface is changed. And with the interface, we've also seen [00:11:30] lots of changes. Like we don't have the expanded. Search ads anymore. [00:11:35] We don't have now it's just the responsive search ads. Yeah. And so I find that interesting. It's a whole new build and where we've changed how we Build campaigns because of all these changes. But I think how we build campaigns is basically also based on the broad match integration and the smart fitting. [00:11:56] And the expanded search ad experience. Oh, [00:12:00] do you remember that when they were like. The Google ads was showing up on search partners and people had unchecked the box saying, I don't want to show up on search partners. And then they were like we'll just take away the box. So you don't get the choice. [00:12:20] Yeah, that was a, it was really nice. One of them that yeah yeah, it's one of those ones where Google is definitely push forcing the hand a little bit on like [00:12:30] limitations that they're obviously pushing for more of the automations, more of it which I had with the client where they had blown the entire campaign budget within a couple hours. [00:12:38] And No one can tell me why that had happened. And they, cause they're basically the poor staff guys are just saying it's the automations. they blamed you. They blamed you. So we have learned, like when you launch a campaign, you've got to watch it like a hawk for the first few days. Like you're, you literally leave the tab open and just keep looking. [00:12:58] And keep seeing, [00:13:00] because we literally had a campaign that if you change, so bidding strategy is huge and this is bidding strategy has changed and there's even bidding strategies. Like I haven't really used much of there's a shared portfolio bidding strategy we haven't dived into. [00:13:16] I've just started really diving into ROAS and what is the other one? Where where you. Give it like there's the way you do this strategy around bidding is huge, right? Cause you either start off [00:13:30] with maximize clicks or manual bidding. You don't start off with maximize conversion, although that would seem like a natural thing to do, but you want a certain number of conversions before you change to that. [00:13:43] And then before you change to row as you want a certain number of it's a progression. of how well the account's doing over time. Yeah, it's definitely one that you don't, you're definitely going to pick different bidding strategies for different stages of the campaign. It's, so [00:14:00] as a a mature campaign you want to have with a target CPA or a max conversion. [00:14:04] Or a ROAS, so if it's an e commerce. Or if you do actually do know your numbers. That's another one. And that's also sorry. That just reminds me to go with the bidding strategy. One other big one. That's goes with the privacy component and the changing of bidding strategies is a lot more customer match lists and a lot more offline conversions. [00:14:22] If you can suck them up So additional signals. Yeah, additional signals that you could send to Google that, [00:14:30] Hey, find me more people like this list of emails, right? If you already have your customer list, that's a customer match list. Or if you have like your CRM. And because Google is now, they have a little window that I'm interested to see what it's going to look like in the future. [00:14:43] But it says, you, visitors, To raw leads and then they have qualified leads. So my guess is that's what was built for the sales force and HubSpot people that as you get people Not not only are you collecting leads, but like you can then [00:15:00] of those leads how many actually became customers and you can signal that Yeah, go on. [00:15:04] Sorry yeah, so that way you could signal say it's offline meaning that it's like not On a website someone just showing up and converting it's offline in the sense that you're in a crm that has its own little ecosystem, they make it through your funnel and then they become a customer, then you could send that signal that, Oh, actually that person did integrate. [00:15:24] And more I'm talking about this, the more I realized. So yeah, it is Salesforce and [00:15:30] HubSpot purpose. Yeah. So does that. And those are the only two CRMs that connect. The API, is that correct? Out of the box. Oh. You could set up your own integration. If you have a developer and say you have we could connect a Google Sheet. [00:15:47] And then it just has as a row, it has a customer and say we change their status. You could set up your own, it's just you have to be technically proficient to go connect to it. Out of the gate HubSpot. Okay. So if you're choosing a new [00:16:00] CRM, those might, and you're planning on doing Google ads, that might be something to consider because things do all integrate, right? [00:16:08] You see this with real estate agents too, right? We all want to see that person coming from our website. Say they came from Google ads, they go to our website and they end up in our customer management system. And then your customer management system and your content management system could work together and you know what your customers want. [00:16:28] So then you write content. [00:16:30] Anyway, that's, so that's where marketing and sales combine. And instead of the funnel being a V it's now that hourglass, with the sale being in the middle. And yeah, anyway, it's all integrated now, people all integrated. So let's get back to Google. I was just gonna, I was just gonna say, just to put a bow on it is that the more data the more data we can feed Google that's Especially of conversions, anything like that, the better Google's going to perform, especially in an age where it's [00:17:00] just trying to automate everything. [00:17:01] And everything's going to be that they want to supercharge that component. So yeah, more data, you can give it the clean data of these are people I want more of the better it's going to do. Yeah. And you can't just go buy in lists, right? That's not legal. But so with all of these changes, so it used to be, you had to spend a certain amount of money to use the customer match list. [00:17:21] So that's an add on. That people can really get behind right the AI what I think Google's trying to do is to let [00:17:30] people use AI, but also help people realize that it's pretty intensive Google ads. Now we were going to think that they were going to AI us out of there or try to, and the reality is that they've made so many bells and whistles and bobbins and knobbins that you need an expert to know where to go or else you just blindly spend money. Yeah, or you open yourself up like we had a client that Google had turned on generate assets for you and it was [00:18:00] listing them with Disney and the title, which I'm like, I couldn't write that into the ad copy if I wanted to, because that's copywritten term and they were advertising with Disney. [00:18:09] They had no association with them whatsoever. So it was like. Totally misguided. I turned on the automation to try it with our own account. And then we were listed like one of our images was furniture. It was like, yeah, but that's because we work with a furniture store. So I thought that was very strange. [00:18:25] But there are new enhancements coming. There's a new place you [00:18:30] can in the assets section, right? Where you can see the combinations of your images with your text. Because Google wants to. Be more like Facebook and give you not just words to use, but actual media, right? More... /episode/index/show/0f00779a-4a64-4cf7-ba34-2cd575a50cc6/id/36315120

This Month In The World Of Marketing 06/27/2024

This Month In The World Of Marketing This Month In The World Of Marketing [00:00:00] Hello everyone! Today we are talking search social websites and AI. This is the time we come together to talk everything digital marketing, bring you up to speed with what we know in our specific professions. [00:00:13] So I'm Pip, Seymour Digital Media, and this is with also with Seymour Digital Media. And can someone share this into the group? Because I, on this computer, I'm not able to do that. And I'm Rina from LittleWorks Indie [00:00:30] Media. And I'm Greg McKinnon with Original72 Creative. And today it's really interesting. [00:00:38] We're going to dive into Google leaks, social stuff. Let's take it all away with Rina cause she's always over prepared. Okay. There's a bit, I'm just going to hit some highlights and you guys can chime in. If anything sounds interesting. One of the things that I wanted to bring up, which is really exciting is that YouTube has brought out thumbnail tester. [00:00:59] So you can [00:01:00] upload your thumbnail into YouTube and it will tell you what it looks like in all the various configurations that you might want it for. So that's been great. It was supposed to roll out a couple of weeks ago. I haven't actually seen it on my account yet, but I will be signing in after this to find it. [00:01:16] Wait. I'm interested. So Phelan, you're going to share it over because you know how to do that better than me. So if you could, and Rina, so YouTube thumbnails. Yes. What? Tell me more, what's going on? [00:01:30] It's a multivariate tester. So you put in your thumbnail and it tells you if it's going to work for all of the different device aspect ratios, yeah. And also different ones. Cause I know like Mr. Beast, he was the biggest YouTuber. He does multivariate testing with all his thumbnails. Cause that's the biggest component. So if you can have someone automating that rather than doing it manually. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of YouTubers are going to try that where it's going to, because I've noticed if you pay attention to your subscribe feed, when it first launches a video, usually it'll be [00:02:00] one and then they'll swap it out for a new one that they'll test within an hour to see, because the first hour is really the crucial time to try out different variants as it gets released. [00:02:10] Crazy! Yeah. So that's great. So what you're saying is the funny face still shot before your video is not the best thing to use. Is that what you mean? It depends. It actually works really well in short form content. It's it ranks better, but I think if you're concerned about branding and [00:02:30] the long form content, I think works pretty well with them. [00:02:33] As much as possible, I'd always advocate for people to have a specifically created. Image to represent whatever they're Oh, really? That's not so the short form videos get higher click rate when there isn't a branded thumbnail. Um, short form videos, or are you talking about shorts form videos? [00:02:53] No, shorts get covers. Shorts. They took covers away from shorts. Sorry, I'm not talking about YouTube in particular. I'm [00:03:00] talking about video in general. So if you're putting it out on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram the research has. Suggesting that putting branded thumbnails on those is not really working because it's a live situation or it's meant to be live situation. [00:03:17] So people want to follow people who are on Tik reels, that type of thing. But on YouTube, yep. You can't put It automatically does something on YouTube for your shorts and then when it comes to long form, I'm [00:03:30] still using thumbnails for for longer videos, regular videos on YouTube. Yeah, I am too. [00:03:36] So this sounds interesting to pay attention to. All right, we'll come back to any other news on YouTube? Not on YouTube, but I have a lot more. If you want to get it, come on. There is a new piece of research out. I'll put the link in the comments regarding a disabling social media comments and how that affects your audience. [00:03:58] It's pretty interesting. [00:04:00] Basically, I think we could probably all guess that people notice it and they don't like it. And the research is particular to influencers and individuals, celebrities, but I'm pretty sure. It would translate quite well to brands in addition. So the idea of being on social media is being social. [00:04:19] So if you're just posting your stuff and disabling comments or not getting back to comments, it's probably not great for your brand. It is a pretty interesting piece [00:04:30] of research, so I highly recommend everybody read it. Can you share a link to that after the live in the feed? Yeah, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Yeah, so that seems pretty straightforward, yes? Yes we all love social stuff, and I think it's now a combination of search social websites. Using AI, that's really going to help brands along. And that's why we do this monthly and we just added in the AI stuff. And is there any other news associated with some [00:05:00] social stuff? [00:05:00] I know you're all excited. Two more pieces that I'd love to hit if I get the time. So you get the time. Yeah. We all heard, I'm not sure if it was this month or last month, but Adobe had put out their terms of services that they're taking all of the imagery that we're making on Adobe and using it to inform, not, that's not the word, it's not inform, it is, um, where is it? [00:05:21] Aggregate into their, like their US training data. There is a word that they use though. And I want it to be particular about it, but I'll find it in a [00:05:30] sec. So what and Meta is also doing the same thing. Um, this month they announced that and it is actually really hard to opt out of Facebook AI content. [00:05:42] If you're, if you want to get out of it, you actually have to set up answer a form stating why you want to be. Not included in that to opt out, which is an extra step. So probably a lot of people won't even bother doing that. And then I'm not even sure if they approve it or how it works on their [00:06:00] end. [00:06:00] But that's one thing. And they are being sued by the European yeah. Um, although Google and open a, I have already gone through being sued and organized with the European union. They're not doing it. They're just doing it very particular. And then let's see here where, oh yes. So the, so Facebook has faced 11 legal challenges in Europe. [00:06:22] So we'll see how that organizes out. Interestingly enough, Facebook says that they want to do it differently than everyone else because they want to be [00:06:30] transparent, but they don't say Or they don't even say they want to be better than anyone else. They just say that they want to be more transparent, but they don't say more transparent than what or who. [00:06:39] So that'll be interesting to see what that is. So I feel like Facebook is constantly throwing the transparency word around there's that's a big piece of its branding, which I find really intriguing because it's almost a. Of a concept less word, like everybody has a different idea of what it means. [00:06:56] It doesn't have, it's not really grounded in any kind of definition or [00:07:00] meaning on their part. So that's interesting. That is interesting. Say before we jump off it Adobe has actually already changed the TOS. So the TOS change that was in section 4. 2 that you were, it's already been updated. So back down and they're not, oh, that's good. [00:07:18] Oh, that's why I missed that. Okay. Just so everybody knows, because I wanted to bring this up as well, was that the whole the whole shady thing for the Adobe [00:07:30] change of terms. to have everybody accept. And so that it would give them the right to all of the works that are being produced on their platforms and they could go in. [00:07:45] And they essentially owned rights to it as well, which was Is a massive no for that industry and really anybody who is trying to produce or do work [00:08:00] for any of their clients on, like, it's their work. Yeah, because who owns it then, right? Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. [00:08:09] Who's contract trumps? Yeah, they haven't integrated copyright law into this at all. I don't know what who is the copyright, the default copyright holder in the U S but in Canada, the producer is the copyright holder, unless they've signed an agreement with an agency or a client. But it didn't always used to be like that. [00:08:26] When I first started out in in the arts, the [00:08:30] copyright was owned by the person who paid for it to a certain extent, and it depended on what your work was being used for. But it was we never had that issue before, but now then the copyright rules changed. I forgot when it was changed. [00:08:44] It was in the nineties or something where it rev, reversed. The default was always the producer. So the photographer or the graphic designer in particular even if they're working for an agency, so unless there's a better agreement in place. Yeah. Cause I'm always looking at, I'm that's in [00:09:00] my my contractors. [00:09:01] We always deal with that. If you're a freelancer or if you're an agency, you should have a piece about who owns the copyright to be produced so that you don't come up against problems. And usually what it is people can resell things at a later date or use them in there's one big designer, I forgot his name, but he did a retrospective exhibition of all of his work at the gallery. [00:09:24] So he definitely owns all of his work, but if a company owned their work with him, then he wouldn't [00:09:30] be able to put that into his retrospective. So there's, it's pretty interesting. Yeah. Or is joined us. Hold on. Let me say what I always talked about. Disabled comments, bugger. She missed the YouTube tips. [00:09:41] Yeah. And go back and see those. Those are good ones. And then the license, the 4. 2 license to your content solely for the purpose of operating or improving the service and software you grant is not again, lots of interesting stuff. That's very legal speak ish. But this is something really to pay attention to, [00:10:00] right? [00:10:00] About like images, video. And yeah, you can't, I actually just ran into someone who's taking images off the internet, thinking that because it was on a public space for her to view it, that she could just use those photos in her marketing. I had, I was really quite. a little bit, there was still somebody in there in that, in the sphere that thought that was okay. [00:10:23] Cause when I asked, where did you get the photo and did you purchase a license for it? Or is it fine to use? [00:10:30] That was the answer I got. I found it online and it's that's not really specific. So out there, people are still doing that. You do get a licensing fee. What they call, it's not really a fine if they can't call it a fine. [00:10:42] It's called a retroactive license fee and it's quite a lot. It's more than hiring. It's annoyingly high. It's way higher than what it would have cost you to bought the image and buy the image in the first place. But it's much, it's just a little bit less than what it would cost to have a lawyer look at it. [00:10:58] for you and write you a letter [00:11:00] that was done on purpose. Exactly. Totally. So people have to pay these things and it comes up from time to time. Just to be clear as well, the whole point of AI is it's an obfuscation machine for licensing and copyright. The whole purpose is that you put it in a bunch of images, it goes into the AI thing, and then you ask it to spit out an image. [00:11:22] Yeah, it doesn't it's supposed to obfuscate who actually created that image. That's why anytime they ask them Hey, how did where did [00:11:30] you get all these images to feed this machine? And they stammer and they don't answer the question Yeah, what they want to do is just say we just generated it Out a whole cloth out of taking all this and so it's a new thing that doesn't have any copyright associated with it Because they've already had one legal case go through Where they had a completely auto generated comic and it was deemed that no one had the copyright to it by the courts. [00:11:51] Yeah. Yeah. So that makes it even more interesting. Did you know for just an aside with the AI stuff, there was a photography competition [00:12:00] and it was backwards as to what one, it was an AI competition and the photo that one was a guy that put in a real human photo and so that human photo one. [00:12:10] That tells you a bit about perspective. It's going to be very interesting for the psychology of things. Things and the digital marketing. Ooh, Phelan, you're doing a PIP. What is going on? I saw that. Oh, Greg's like wrong section of it for me. I was like, Oh, that was great. That's exactly what I was hoping for. [00:12:29] Greg got a little [00:12:30] snicker out of that. Didn't he? It's what's PIP doing now? It's not me, buddy. So on the computer. On a similar topic, there is integrated ad science, which is a company is working on a brand new safety tool designed to keep deep fake content away from ad content so that proximity is important for branding. [00:12:55] When you think about putting your ads online, do we always know what [00:13:00] our ads are going next to? I'm sure you've seen those ads at the bottom of kind of shady magazines where you read a good article. Autumn has got terrible they look like blog articles. Yeah. They're just awful. So this is going to help with spam. [00:13:12] Yeah. So this is going to help brands stay away from that, which is really great. And open AI has already started their own version of that too. So that's good. I'm encouraged about that. And Because the most there's this one line that I got out of this that says most analysis say [00:13:30] that issues of deep fake ad adjacency is likely to worsen in the coming years as generative AI becomes more widely available, which I agree with. [00:13:38] Lots of deep fake stuff. And actually, interestingly enough there's a bunch of ads that are just circulating on Tik Tok that were made by deep. They're deep fakes and they're AI generated and they are actual politicians making really outlandish yes, they're making these awful interesting and people are believing it because that looks [00:14:00] like the person that they see on the news all the time. [00:14:02] So yeah, this is, it's going to be so messy. Election time is going to be so messy is well, it's going to be interesting with interference. Go on. On that note, I was just going to say, I'm not sure if anybody else heard this news, but I had recently seen that it was found that a specific account, I believe it was that was doing like pro Trump propaganda. [00:14:28] Was basically [00:14:30] a Russian bot and proved that it was like, it was taken down, but it just goes to show that, people from anywhere can create these big accounts and bots and. Propagate whatever message they want to message to, to interfere with or sway people's votes or anything else for that agenda. [00:14:54] We're going to learn so much probably after the election the American election, [00:15:00] right? Just to see what's happened because it sounds like deep fake. So what is the outcome? I know Phelan is going to jump in, but it's don't believe what you read. Don't believe what don't believe what you hear always take that experimental view of, let me get more data, right? [00:15:14] Yeah. Steven's got a question here after Reena. Yeah. You have to really understand what critical thinking actually means. And that is a methodology that has certain steps. So if you can only find an article in three places and you've never heard of [00:15:30] those those before, then chances are, it's not real. [00:15:34] That's usually fine. What? Okay. Stephen's wondering now, you mentioned that there's a question on who created the work as a freelancer. Yeah. Versus agency. So this is for Reena. Yeah. What happens when you consider the client any ideas on who would own the work? Yep. And how could that be argued? It really depends on how agencies organize their contracts [00:16:00] with their freelancers and with their clients. [00:16:03] So generally speaking, it is custom to, for the agency to want the rights of ownership over the freelancer. And if they're paying well enough that's the ideas that you usually, that's a leverage point for freelancers to take. Charge a good amount. If you're working with the client, usually in the contract with the client, there's a section that tells the client how they can use it. [00:16:28] Because, of course, if you're using any [00:16:30] stock photography, which I know is not what exactly what we're talking about right now, there's only a certain number of uses you can use that stock photography license for. So similarly there's usually some parameters around what the client can use. So how many prints can they make? [00:16:45] Like they can't just make 50 years of brochures with this one brochure. They're usually limited by print run or they're limited by how they use it. So it could be that, you would give a logo with the intention that they could, [00:17:00] And you provide them with the files that they could use it anywhere. [00:17:03] But if you're doing something that's more specific their use the wording is usually around, you're allowed to use this, the business is allowed to use it for its own marketing purposes. It's not allowed to use it for anything else. So they can't resell it to another business. They can't use it in an art show. [00:17:20] They can't create a calendar or a a table book. Where would people find this information? I [00:17:30] don't know. I've, I had my lawyer write my piece up, but I'm sure that there are templates online that you could get some wording from, and then have your legal representative, because of course, we're in Canada, and each province, and each government, Country is going to be slightly different on how they can do things and how they should say things So you want to make sure that you've got that covered? [00:17:51] That's what I would say check a template. Welcome to social media turning into politics and rules It's very interesting behind the scenes of [00:18:00] all the things we need to know, right? Speaking of websites and images or images and then moving to website. Oh failing. Yep We, before we jump off that, you, we missed one piece that was in that, that I think is going to be super important for everyone, which is the FTC is suing Adobe over dark patterns, which is a big thing for, so basically a dark pattern is like you design the website so it leads you away from actually [00:18:30] canceling your subscription. [00:18:30] That's specifically what they went after them for. Thank you, Amazon. Did Amazon get sued? And also, it was for hiding their cancellation fees and things like that. If you did want to cancel early. They bury that stuff so far that nobody Ever knows about that's another reason that they're suing. [00:18:55] Yeah. It's all crazy It's all part of like dark basically you're getting sued over dark [00:19:00] patterns It's like when how that kind of comes to that's why when legal experts were talking about this they mentioned the dark patterns as being the more That this is going to be used as a means to go after other companies, like Amazon, who's notoriously has a 14 step you have to go through 14 pages to cancel your Amazon account. [00:19:17] They're like, Oh my God. Yeah. Like they will make you like, and they'll, they make the button to like, cancel, like to not cancel so big. And then the other one to actually move forward with the cancel, it's like really small. It's like [00:19:30] part of the text. And so like they, like all these, so really What's it what's important about it to my mind is not necessarily Adobe but it's that the government can go after companies for doing this... /episode/index/show/0f00779a-4a64-4cf7-ba34-2cd575a50cc6/id/36315125

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