Minute Masters Series

Daily Minute Master Series – January 7, 2020.

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Social Media

How Social Media Influencers Can Impact Your Customers’ Purchase Decisions

If you haven’t heard, social media influencers now play a pivotal role in marketing for a wide range of brands. Whether it’s endorsing a skincare product, a luxurious handbag, a new model SUV or even the latest knitting accessory, there’s a digital influencer for every product, and increasingly, more businesses are joining the influencer marketing bandwagon as a means to improve their marketing and outreach strategies. But how do influencers actually ‘influence’, and subsequently guide people’s purchase behavior?

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Twitter Officially Launches It’s ‘Promoted Trend Spotlight’ Ad Option

After months of testing, Twitter is now officially launching its new ‘Promoted Trend Spotlight’ ad unit, which will enable brands to take up to top section of its Explore tab, a prime placement opportunity for major brand awareness campaigns. It’s taken some time for Twitter to roll the option out beyond its initial test group (selected advertisers in the US, UK and Japan), but now, the Promoted Trend Spotlight option will be made available to brands in the US, the UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, and Thailand.  The option, which Twitter says is a compliment to its Promoted Trend ads, will support 6-second videos and GIFs, as well as static images. ​

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Marketing

Google’s Hogging Half Your Traffic: How to Get It Back

Google. One of the most powerful tech companies in the world. One we depend on for traffic, revenue, and leads. Competing with us little search marketers. It used to be a give-and-take. We provide the content – Google provides the traffic. But for the first time in history, that relationship has become lopsided, favoring Google. For the first time in history, more searches end on Google – without a click – than with one. These are the so-called “zero-click searches.” Already, more than 50% of Google searches end without a click. And that’s a huge threat to our websites.

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How to Track Offline Conversions in Microsoft Advertising

Previously, I wrote about how to track offline conversions from Google Ads. Importing data from outside sources, such as phone calls and CRM records, helps to complete the picture of revenue attributable beyond immediate website activity. Chances are, as a digital marketer, you don’t solely work with Google Ads. Many of us are also actively managing Microsoft Advertising accounts. In this article, I’ll walk through importing offline conversion data into Microsoft Advertising.

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Daily Minute Master Series – January 3, 2020.

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Social Media

Twitter Previews Potential Enhancements for Lists and Topics, Including Activity Details and Location Sorting

After adding lists as alternate, swipeable tweet feeds back in September, and then topics as an additional following option two months later, Twitter is now working to give lists and topics even more focus, with a range of updates designed to help improve content discovery, and connect more people – particularly new users – to increasingly relevant, engaging tweet content. As part of a recent interview with Fast Company, various members of Twitter’s design and development teams provided insight into where the company is headed on both lists and topics, the introduction of which is designed to make it easier for people to link into the conversations of relevance to them.

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YouTube Adds ‘Assisted Trim’ Feature to Automatically Crop Out Copyright Claimed Elements

Under YouTube’s system, whenever a copyright claim is filed and approved, this also enables the claimant to take any revenue generated from that video as a result – which, inevitably, has lead to some spurious claims, where even the slightest hint of a music clip, for example, has been used to siphon ad dollars away from creators. You can see how this has caused headaches – but conversely, you can also understand how YouTube is looking to cater to copyright holders, and provide a more enforceable, equitable system, even if it does lead to some exploitation of the rules.

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Marketing

The Big Comings and Goings in Paid Search 2019 That Will Shape How We Market in 2020

In 2019, Google shook up mobile search results pages with a redesign that introduced black “Ad” labels to text ads and favicons for organic listings. It also caused a stir in notifying some advertisers it would start handling campaign management for them. Automation continued to be a major theme. This year, it was reflected most prominently in Google’s product announcements aimed at owning the funnel with campaigns that extend across properties. Adjusting to new privacy restrictions and expectations also took on new urgency and will have a significant impact on search marketing in the year to come.

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5 Ways Influencer Marketing Will Evolve in 2020

With estimates predicting that influencer marketing spending might double in 2020—en route to becoming a projected $15 billion market by 2022—it’s a good bet that influencers will be moving further up the priority lists of many brand marketers. Importantly, this growth will come from brands investing in influencer marketing for the first time, in addition to existing brands that have experienced strong returns and are expanding their investments accordingly. Yet, despite the increased budgets and the rising number of brands looking to participate, influencer marketing is still sometimes described as the “Wild West.” It certainly wasn’t without its fair share of controversy in 2019, and the responsibility for professionalizing and standardizing practices continues to be shared between the platforms, regulators and agencies.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 31, 2019.

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Social Media

Snapchat Outlines Rising Trends for 2020 In New Report

So what’s cool with the kids, and what are likely to be the key trends of note among younger audiences in 2020? Given that some 73% of 18 to 24 year-olds use Snapchat, its data insights likely provide some indication, and this week, Snapchat has provided an overview of the key trends of note as we head into 2020, based on on-platform discussion and chatter leading into the latter part of the year.

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Spotify Latest Platform to Halt Political Ads

Tech platforms have been grappling with how to handle political advertising on their sites, particularly ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In November, Twitter announced a ban on promoting political content. “While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn and Bing do not allow political advertising. Facebook introduced new rules for political campaign and issue ads in 2018, requiring advertisers to be verified. However, Facebook refuses to fact check political ads. Spotify’s new policy will cover candidates, elected and appointed officials, nonprofits and political parties and Super PACs as well as advocacy content around political entities and legislative or judicial outcomes, Ad Age reported.

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Marketing

Pop-up Ads: Why Everyone Hates Them and Why They’ll Never Die

“I love pop-up ads,” said nobody…ever. Pop-up ads have to be one of the most universally hated parts of online marketing. They’re annoying, interruptive and distracting. In fact, they’re so generally loathed that their inventor, Ethan Zuckerman, has apologized publicly for creating them. So why do we as marketers keep using them? Although Zuckerman’s original windowed display ads have gone out of vogue, pop-up ads are everywhere on the internet. And their most prevalent form? On-site pop-up ads. Now, some companies have tried to rebrand these sorts of pop-up ads using fancy titles like “exit overlays,” but at the end of the day, a pop-up ad is still a pop-up ad. It pops up on the user’s screen, hijacks their experience and bugs the heck out of people.

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2019: The Year That Privacy Got Real For Marketers

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was passed in 2018 and came into sharp focus this year, as January 1, 2020 has approached. As we draw closer to that implementation deadline, the IAB, DAA and a host of software companies have introduced “compliance frameworks” and tools to help marketers and publishers address the requirements of the act. However, there’s still considerable corporate foot dragging and uncertainty. That’s consistent with what happened with GDPR compliance. Indeed, many companies operating in Europe are still not fully compliant more than a year and a half later. With CCPA, there won’t be any enforcement actions before July 1, 2020, giving affected marketers some additional time to get in line.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 30, 2019.

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Social Media

How to Create Content Your Target Audience Actually Wants

In the ebb and flow of content marketing trend analyses comes the return of the “content fatigue” narrative. We’re told content marketing doesn’t work as well as it used to, that it’s redundant and that there’s too much of it. But as long as we have the Internet, content is going to be the playing field for our sport. We need to focus on making better content. Not less, not more—just better.

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Marketing

Faceted Navigation: Best Practices for SEO

When it comes to large websites, such as ecommerce sites with thousands upon thousands of page, the importance of things like crawl budgetcannot be understated. Building a website with an organized architecture and smart internal linking strategy is key for these types of sites. However, doing that properly oftentimes involves new challenges when trying to accommodate various attributes that are a common theme with ecommerce (sizes, colors, price ranges, etc.). Faceted navigation can help solve these challenges on large websites.

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What Account-Based Marketing Will Mean for B-to-B in 2020

It’s safe to say that 2020 will bring increased competition for b-to-b companies across geographies and market sectors. Adding to this already intense market is an increase in the number and diversity of roles involved in buying decisions, along with added pressure for b-to-b marketers to adhere to best practices in customer experience, media buying and measurement. Fortunately, more tools tailored to the needs of b-to-b marketers are becoming readily available, none more so than those that support the efforts of account-based marketing (ABM).

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SEO Year In Review 2019: Zero-click Searches BERT, Local Spam and More

Search was a roller coaster of ups and downs in 2019: Structured data-powered rich results helped to push zero-click searches to an all-time high. Regulatory scrutiny heated up as numerous antitrust investigations of Google were announced domestically and abroad. BERT brought enhanced natural language understanding to search engines. Bing turned 10 — it’s been more disruptive than it gets credit for. We said goodbye to Google+, the company’s biggest (and doomed) push into social media. And, after 21 years, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down and appointed Google CEO Sundar Pichai to lead Alphabet.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 27, 2019.

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Social Media

Facebook Publishes New Listing of Key Trends Set to Gain Momentum in 2020

The listing, which Facebook has compiled into a new, 30-page eBook, is based on examination of on-platform conversation shifts over the last two years, and now covers global trends, as opposed to only US usage: “In our previous reports, we’ve featured trends from the US. Now, in our third year, we’ve expanded our view to include trends from four regions – Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America – and 14 countries within them. Our new global view allows us to highlight the diversity of people and ideas on our platform and to look at trends in a new way. “

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How to Get Verified on Facebook and Instagram

Hey, do you want to get that elusive verified tick on your Facebook and/or Instagram profile? Of course you do, everyone does – and now, Facebook has provided an updated overview of how you can do it. But a word of warning – even if you do apply through these processes, there is absolutely no guarantee, of any kind, that Facebook or Instagram will approve your verification request. The below notes simply relate to how you can go about applying, it’s not an insider’s guide to getting verified, as such.

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Marketing

Amazon Makes It Easier for Agencies to Advertise on Their Clients’ Behalf

Agencies no longer have to submit vendor codes when registering nor wait for approval from Amazon to set up new advertising accounts. Now, agencies simply need the approval of the authorized Vendor Central account holder (their client) to register a new advertising account. If you don’t have an account yet, and you’re going to be advertising on behalf of an Amazon vendor, click “Register” and then choose “I represent a vendor.” After you fill in the account details, Amazon will either send you an email with instructions for requesting client approval or send an email directly to the client contact if you provide the appropriate email address. It will need to go to the contact who manages the vendor retail relationship with Amazon via Vendor Central. Once the contact approves the request, you’ll be cleared to advertise.

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3 Tips to Elevate Your Brand’s Email Program

It’s easy to find yourself bogged down in the day-to-day rush of developing and sending email campaigns. Implementing a few simple processes can help your team identify efficiencies and opportunities you might not see when you are in the weeds. Subscribe to your own emails. Mary Sohn, a member of the industry group Women of Email, recommended in its private Facebook Group to audit your subscription process at least annually. Going through the process of signing up for your own emails allows you to experience it from the user’s perspective.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 24, 2019.

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Social Media

Social Shorts: Facebook Tests Brand Collabs Tool on IG, Twitter Beefs Up Safety Council, YouTube Creators Protest Censorship

Snapchat unveils interactive ad format. In partnership with Paramount Pictures for the 2020 release of “Top Gun: Maverick,” Snapchat has launched a new interactive movie preview ad format dubbed the “trailer reaction lens.” These AR lenses allow Snapchat users to participate in the campaign by creating their own content in a split-screen format, capturing both the movie trailer and the user’s reaction. Users can add creative elements to their reaction shots with digital overlays used to promote the film. The move adds Snapchat to the growing list of platforms attempting to encourage real-time interaction from users.

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Marketing

A Geek’s Guide To Managing Your Email List In 2020

Email marketers should remain cautious to not overwhelm new subscribers with onboarding campaigns. A 2019 survey from GetResponse that analyzed global email users indicates that high send frequency results in low engagement — but could be offset by optimized subject lines. Make engagement a KPI for these types of emails.Brand email communications should be a two-way street. Many brands still use ‘donotreply’ email addresses when sending emails through an email service provider. Why wouldn’t you want to hear direct feedback from your subscribers?

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SMS Overtime: Here’s How To Take Control Of Your Account Ad Groups And Search Terms

There are a few considerations to think about with this question. The very first one is simple, but quite important, “Do searchers consider these words to be the same?” For instance, in my presentation, we looked at car hire and car rental search terms. Google considers these words to be the same and will show them interchangeably. However, searchers interact very differently with these terms. If searchers are interacting differently with the keywords, you want to keep them both and often put them in their own ad groups and then use exact match negative keywords to make sure the proper one is being displayed to the user.

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Facebook Acquires Video Commerce Startup ‘Packagd’ to Help Boost In-Stream Buying Options How To Use XML Sitemaps To Boost SEO

As the web evolves, so too does Google and SEO.This means what is considered best practice is often in flux. What may have been good counsel yesterday, is not so today.This is especially true for sitemaps, which are almost as old as SEO itself. The problem is, when every man and their dog has posted answers in forums, published recommendations on blogs and amplified opinions with social media, it takes time to sort valuable advice from misinformation. So while most of us share a general understanding that submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console is important, you may not know the intricacies of how to implement them in a way that drives SEO key performance indicators (KPIs).

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 23, 2019.

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Social Media

LinkedIn Publishes New Data On Ad Engagement for B2B Brands Over the Holidays

Should you be running ads or publishing content over the holidays? The instinctive logic is probably that you shouldn’t – people are spending more time with family, sharing updates with friends. They likely want a break from work-related posts and material. But then again, people also have more free time. Maybe, in those gaps where they’re taking a moment to themselves, they might actually want to read something related to their professional interests. This is question that many social media managers have asked themselves over the years, and there isn’t a definitive answer. But this year, LinkedIn went to the tape – utilizing its insights on B2B ad engagement from last year, LinkedIn has identified some key trends in B2B content engagement over the period, which may help to inform your strategic approach.

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Facebook Acquires Video Commerce Startup ‘Packagd’ to Help Boost In-Stream Buying Options

As part of its burgeoning eCommerce push, earlier this year, Facebook acquired video commerce startup Packagd, which, prior to the acquisition, had been focused on enabling users to make direct purchases of products via live-stream, unboxing-type videos. As per Bloomberg: “The social media company bought Packagd, a five-person company founded by Eric Feng, a former partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and most of the startup’s team joined Facebook in September. Packagd was building a shopping product for YouTube videos. “Think of it as a re-imagination of QVC or a home shopping network,” Feng said in a 2017 interview with Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang.”

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Marketing

Google Ads to End Customer Support Via Social Jan 1,2020

Earlier this year, Google Ads announced it is shifting customer support requests to an online form and will no longer supporting customer service through Facebook and Twitter. On Friday, Google said that, as of January 1, 2020, direct messaging on the Google Ads’ Facebook and Twitter accounts will be deactivated, and users will see a pinned post directing them to the online support form.

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Here’s How Google BERT Can Impact Your Content Marketing Efforts

BERT is said to be among the biggest Google updates of the year – affecting roughly 10% of all search queries. BERT – which stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers – was carried out to help Google better understand natural language processing. Major algorithm updates like this generally send SEO professionals into an uproar about how to optimize – chock full of tall tales and misinformation. Google’s mysterious algorithms are on a never-ending quest to better understand what exactly searchers are looking for.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 20, 2019.

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Social Media

Facebook Seeks Music Video Deals to Boost Facebook Watch

“Facebook’s current deals with record companies let users include songs in the background of videos they post on the social network, such as a clip from a wedding or a skateboarding stunt. But Facebook doesn’t yet have the rights to offer the official music videos to hit songs.” If Facebook were able to secure the rights to include music videos, that could make it a more viable alternative to YouTube, while it could also look to offer better terms to rights holders, which could, potentially, also see Facebook hosting exclusive clips. That would be a major win for its video platform.

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Facebook Will Run it’s First Super Bowl Ad in 2020 as it Seeks to Reinforce its Societal Benefits

As you can see in this example, groups is the specific focus of the ‘More Together’ ad push, with Facebook giving its on-platform communities a more concerted drive since 2017. Back then, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook also changed its mission statement from “Making the world more open and connected” to “Bring the world closer together” – with so many issues stemming from that open connectivity, Facebook aimed to re-align itself around community, while usage patterns have also shown that more conversations are gradually shifting into private messaging and closed groups.

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Marketing

Google Says Some Search Console Data For December Might Be Inaccurate

Google quietly announced that a bug was discovered in Search Console which may impact reporting for a period of time in December. Specifically, the bug affects reporting of Google Discover impressions and clicks between December 8 and December 13. As a result, site owners may see a data drop in the Performance report during that time period.

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Facebook Expands Brand Collabs Manager to Include Instagram Creators

With influencer marketing set to remain a significant consideration in 2020, particularly on Instagram, Facebook is now looking to provide an easier, more direct way for brands and Instagram creators to collaborate on campaigns and partnerships. Last year, Facebook launched its Brand Collabs Manager tool, which is essentially a search engine for Facebook creators, in order to help brands find relevant, on-platform influencers to connect with. Now, Facebook is opening up Brand Collabs Manager to Instagram creators as well, which will make it a more comprehensive creator marketplace tool, and could, potentially, establish the building blocks for the definitive Instagram influencer database.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 19, 2019.

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Social Media

Instagram Has New Rules for Publishing Branded Content

Instagram is introducing a new policy that will prohibit influencers from publishing certain types of content. Under this new policy, branded content that promotes goods such as vaping, tobacco products, and weapons will not be allowed. Instagram’s existing advertising policies have long prohibited that type of content, but the policies were not strictly enforced. That will change in the coming weeks, which is when the company says it will ramp up enforcement.

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LinkedIn Shares 5-Step Checklist for Social Media Marketing Success

Looking to update your social media marketing approach in 2020? This week, LinkedIn has published a simple, five-step checklist for social media marketing success, which is based on insights gleaned from its ‘Live with Marketers’ podcast series. On ‘Live with Marketers’, LinkedIn conducts interviews with a range of social media marketing experts, on topics ranging from brand storytelling to effective measurement and metrics.

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Marketing

Your 6-Point Google Display Campaign Review Checklist for 2020

The end of year is always a good idea to review your Google Display campaign settings, evaluate performance, and do some tidying up. Google Display Only campaigns can be less needy than search campaigns, but they deserve love, too. I like to take a look back at the previous year’s performance to identify trends that may not have been as obvious in a 30-, 60- or 90-day view.

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Social Media Advertising Woes: Where Do Brands Fall Short?

Social platforms and third-party apps seemingly rise and fall overnight, making it difficult for brands to adapt to the evolving landscape and develop targeted, platform-specific content. Consequently, brands often struggle to allocate their resources strategically and purposefully. Strategies that may have been successful in 2018 are already obsolete for 2019. The same will be said for 2020 and beyond. So exactly where are social ad initiatives falling short? And what can brands do to address these shortcomings?

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 18, 2019.

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Social Media

Facebook Owns the Four Most Downloaded Apps of the Decade

In case there was any question of Facebook’s dominance, a new report from app analytics firm App Annie has shown that The Social Network owns the top four most downloaded mobile apps over the last decade. As you can see, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram lead the way in total downloads for the period. Which is no real surprise, but it is worth noting the company’s hold over the mobile market, and the success of its business model and approach over the last ten years

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LinkedIn Adds New Features for Groups to Help Boost Engagement

Once a key feature of the app, LinkedIn groups gradually lost user focus as they became increasingly bogged down with random spam and self-promotion, to the point where, for most, they just weren’t usable anymore. But it still seems like a great opportunity for LinkedIn’s professional community. If LinkedIn can get groups right. And if LinkedIn can line group improvements up with the broader trends towards increased in-app engagement, LinkedIn groups could become a thing again. This week, LinkedIn may have taken another step in that direction with the announcement of a new set of groups updates and tools designed to help drive more engagement and interaction.

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Marketing

New Report Looks at the Growth of Influencer Marketing on Instagram

Data analytics company Klear has conducted a new report on the state of influencer marketing on Instagram, analyzing over three million sponsored posts in order to identify key trends and shifts of note. And the data shows that influencer marketing is, indeed, on the rise. According to Klear’s analysis, the number of Instagram posts using the #ad hashtag, signifying a brand partnership, increased by almost 50% in 2019. That’s probably not surprising – with Instagram seeing more usage, it makes sense that brands would also be looking to align with that shift. But in looking at those posts which include the #ad hashtag, Klear was also able to establish some more specific trends about the rising Instagram influencer landscape.

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Why Are You Making PPC Budgets So Difficult?

Setting a budget for your PPC campaigns is not easy. Too little and you’re selling yourself short. Too much and you’re literally throwing money away. Most tend to err on the side of caution here, with 40% of brands and agencies saying that their PPC budget is lower than it should be. To make things worse, there’s no golden figure or right answer that comes to setting your budget. It’s all down to you. On average, SMEs spend between $108,000 and $120,000 a year on PPC. But there’s absolutely no way of knowing if you should align with those averages or not until you’re there.  However, though PPC budgeting is no easy task it’s not that difficult either. All you have to do is take a step back, relax and stop making it so complicated.

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