The 6 Questions You Should Be Asking Yourself About Privacy Policies

22Jun

Sweeping privacy changes are coming to Facebook, Google, and Instagram. What does this mean for the brands and clients that you manage? Well…quite a lot.

Here are the six big questions that you should be asking yourself as these changes begin to hit, as well as my observations and recommended solutions!

1) Why are the changes to Google and Facebook’s privacy policies significant for brands and affiliates to take note of?

For Facebook, it will impact our ability to accurately track and add to retargeting audiences. This is going to cut deeply into a marketer’s ability to remarket or retarget on Facebook and their sister platform, Instagram.

There will also now be more general ad events than specific ones. So “purchase” will override “add to cart” in reporting. So you will have a max of 8 events per domain. And the new default for mapping user journeys is a simple 7-day click-through attribution.

For Google, we’ll have less data and thus less insight into our conversion metrics. Google Chrome is also removing cookies from its browser.

2) What is going to change when these updates are in place? How will it affect advertising campaigns for operators and affiliates?

Our ad strategies will need to shift quickly and focus on more general platform options and less data. Advertisers will need to pivot their strategies and find out how to fill in the blanks and keep a closer eye on ads more than normal—no “set it and forget” for a while.

3) What are some of the measures we can put in place now to support our businesses through these changes and keep momentum on traffic-driving activity?

Here are some things you can do immediately…

Shift audience-building strategies (like Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences) or Interest-based audiences.
Prioritize events and conversions: choose the best 8 events and make sure they provide the most telling data.
Refocus your metrics: you will need to learn to interpret your results differently. Look at metrics that you may have overlooked, including vanity metrics such as link clicks, website visits, and other on-Facebook metrics. This will help you bridge the gap.
Update Google Analytics for Firebase to support the new SKAdNetwork tracking tool.

4) What tips can you give to affiliates or affiliate/digital marketers managing paid media budgets right now to get maximum ROI on campaigns they might be running?

Focus on new audience-building strategies immediately and rework your events on your website. Understand that you will see some very steep drops in the results of your campaigns. So manage the expectations of your clients in advance. I would suggest having calls with your clients to explain how this will affect things.

Finally, think out of the box and try new advertising venues you’ve ignored in the past. Facebook Lead Forms (and other on-site activities) are great conversion tools!

5) We all know that COVID has impacted budgets, but what are you seeing now as we come out of lockdown? How are companies, brands, affiliates doing things differently now to keep brand reach and customer engagement in the paid media space?

They are much more attuned to the many different metrics and ways to execute campaigns: reporting, conversion, pixel-related items, and integration of shops. I have seen a lot of them get more involved in learning how these changes will affect them rather than burying their head in the sand.

6) What big changes do you foresee in 2022 around paid media, cookieless tracking, and the evolution of technology and data impacting the way we plan media campaigns for acquisition results?

I think we will see a shift to more interest-based audiences and brands not putting all of their money in Facebook, Instagram, and Google but trying other methods.

How To Create Campaigns For New Industries

By Christopher Tompkins

21Jun

Media Mentions

For the first several years of my agency’s existence, our clients were largely healthcare-related. My co-owner is a registered nurse and has extensive experience in healthcare and medical sales. So to capitalize on that, our team and I became healthcare marketing experts. As time went on, however, our client base organically expanded and evolved.

With an expansion in clients naturally comes an expansion in the kinds of businesses that you’re going to be working with. It’s common sense that you can’t market a client who is selling an educational development tool the same way you would market a senior living facility, but that common sense won’t help answer your most important question: How do you strategically create a campaign for a business you’ve never worked with before?

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com, on June 21, 2021. Read the rest of the article here.

12 Ways To Determine An Influencer’s Trustworthiness And Brand Fit

By Christopher Tompkins

17Jun

Media Mentions

by Forbes Agency Council | Expert Panel

Choosing the right influencer for your business to partner with can lead to excellent results, connecting your brand with new customers and increasing sales. However, if their platform or fan base isn’t a great fit for your brand, this can have detrimental effects on your reputation and business.

You can make sure that you enlist the help of a trustworthy, reliable and relevant influencer who enhances your brand image by using the following tips from Forbes Agency Council members. Their strategies will help you learn more about potential influencer partnerships before entering into contracts with them.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com, on June 17, 2021. Read the rest of the article here.

Natural, Engaging, and Transparent: The Secrets to Reddit Success

By Christopher Tompkins

15Jun

As Reddit is rapidly expanding its base (and including more functions that are marketing and advertiser-friendly) our hipper, more internet savvy clients are going to start looking into it. And if our clients are looking into it, that means we should have looked into it three months ago and prepared an upsell.

Reddit is unique as a social media platform. Its community-based and its users are very, very protective over it—they do *not* want to get spammed with obvious marketing content. So, obviously, you can’t post there the same way you would for your client’s Facebook and Twitter accounts or you’ll get flamed off the site.

I’m going to take one of my clients—a workout and wellness app—and try to briefly come up with a campaign strategy that will bring their brand to Reddit naturally. Why did I choose them? Two reasons: one – because the client and creator of the app want to be positioned as a thought leader and grow his community, and two–because a thriving workout community already exists on Reddit.

Reddit is not unconquerable, brands have done it before; see this story about how Nissan appealed to Reddit detectives with a stunt that involved a mystery package being driven around a small town in Wisconsin. It can be done, but you first have to accept that the Redditors are in control.

The first thing I would do is make a profile under my client’s name, not the name of the product. Let’s call him Shawn. Using Shawn’s identity, and maybe even let Shawn handle some of the interactions, I’d enter threads that focused on exercise as well as threads about mental health, PTSD, or discussions related to service members. Shawn’s app is a workout app on the face of it, but the focus is on rehabbing first responders.

The key to achieving success on Reddit is being natural, engaging, and most importantly, transparent. Do not, under any circumstances, try to conceal that you’re a brand. Both because that’s ethically shady and because Reddit users will find you out and reject you.

Do something to catch their attention and get them to actively participate. Maker’s Mark succeeded by creating a fun thread where users named fake liquors after horses who were racing in the Kentucky Derby that year. Just because you’re interacting with an audience that’s younger than you does not mean you need to be constantly posting edgy, disruptive content. In the parlance of the millennial Redditor: that’s cringe.

I would market Shawn by offering his time. Let him advertise himself as a fitness and recovery expert. Host AMAs (Ask Me Anything) and have him give his unique insights into stress relief, pain management, and proper exercise. Build up a community of people who use his app with separate threads for each program where you can do weekly check-ins for customer service purposes or just make sure everybody is handling their program well.

New platforms are all about dedication and experimentation. Look at what other people are doing and see how you can implement that into a long strategy. Looking at other examples isn’t cheating—it’s planning the best course of action for your client’s campaign.

11 Social Media Retargeting Mistakes For Marketers To Avoid

By Christopher Tompkins

14Jun

Media Mentions

by Forbes Agency Council | Expert Panel

Even if you’ve struggled to get the results you seek from your social media retargeting campaigns, don’t write off this tactic. The truth is, retargeting on social media can be a highly effective way to regain the interest of users who didn’t convert the first time they visited your website. However, rushing into a remarketing campaign without a solid strategy can lead to careless mistakes.

Here, 11 members of Forbes Agency Council provide a list of the top mistakes they’ve seen marketers commonly make with social media retargeting campaigns so that you can avoid making these same blunders.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com, on June 14, 2021. Read the rest of the article here.

12 Innovative Ways To Target Generation-Z On Snapchat

By Christopher Tompkins

11Jun

Media Mentions

by Forbes Agency Council | Expert Panel

Snapchat is not dead, especially among 18- to 29-year-olds, which is why marketers shouldn’t ignore advertising on this social network. With Snapchat, they can go beyond simply promoting a product and truly connect with members of Generation-Z on their home turf. To engage with this demographic, marketers will need to formulate innovative strategies that leverage Snapchat’s robust features.

To take advantage of the marketing opportunities that this social platform provides, consider the ideas 12 members of Forbes Agency Council share below. Follow their tips to help your messaging stand out and resonate with Gen-Zers on Snapchat.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com, on June 11, 2021. Read the rest of the article here.

14 Expert Online Marketing Strategies For Minimizing The Impact Of Ad Blockers

By Christopher Tompkins

9Jun

Media Mentions

by Forbes Agency Council | Expert Panel

Consumers turn to the internet to quickly and conveniently find the information and entertainment they want. To ensure they’re not distracted and annoyed by unwanted interruptions, many choose to enable ad blockers to improve their browsing experience. This means marketing agencies have to find creative ways to capture attention online.

The industry experts of Forbes Agency Council understand the limitations ad blockers bring to online marketing. They have tried-and-true techniques for developing marketing and information campaigns that reach target audiences on the Web without annoying or frustrating them. Maintain your ad revenue and build meaningful engagement with their advice.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com, on June 9, 2021. Read the rest of the article here.

Can Piggyback Marketing Make Your Money? Maybe, But Is It Worth It?

By Christopher Tompkins

8Jun

Social Media, Twitter

Twitter has never been exactly the golden goose of marketing potential that agency owners had hoped for. Despite a loyal fellowship of users, branded content rarely sees hits there the way that it does on sites like Instagram. Even brand tweets have the potential to go viral but said tweets are typically unrelated to the brand as a whole, and it’s debatable if any of the success of the tweet is driving sales. I mean, is anyone going to Wendy’s specifically because they roasted Arby’s?

Savvy brands can find a route to success on Twitter, though, by using the platform’s mainform of currency—viral tweets.

In short, a tweet will pop off and start garnering likes in the several thousands. Not long after, a brand will hop in the DMs of the tweeter, offering cash if they tweet an ad for their product as a follow-up in the same thread as the viral tweet.

What this ad is can vary. It can be as much as an actual product endorsement, or something like “hey, check this out”, or simply just a link to the product they’ve been paid to sell. And, when I say paid, don’t go thinking you’ll have to shell out the big bucks. Most Twitter users who’ve done this report getting paid, at most, around $40.

It all started with a tweet about Trump. One Twitter user named @MuthoniK20 fired off an assuming tweet about the former president being banned from TikTok, and before she knew it the tweet had nearly a million likes. And then the offers came rolling in for her to tweet advertisements and links under her viral tweet. You can read the full story on Vox, it’s pretty amusing.

So, the big question then: does this work? The question in return: what metric are you using to define “work”?

If you just want eyes on your product then, yeah, renting space directly after a tweet with hundreds of thousands of likes will do that for you. Are you gonna make any money at it? Eh…

The company that hitched a clout-ride off of @MuthoniK20’s tweet—OceanGalaxyLight, basically novelty night light—said that every link that piggybacks off a viral tweet gets them about 3 or 4 conversions for a total of about $8,000 a year off of Twitter alone. If that’s just a sliver of your income then that’s pretty good! If that’s basically your total income for the year, then that depends on your overhead for the product.

Personally, I would not recommend this style of marketing to anyone. It seems like only minimal profit potential exists and doing this doesn’t present a good image for your product. Firstly, it makes you look like a clout chaser, which you would be, and secondly, it doesn’t place you among ideal peers. Most of the products being sold via piggyback tweets are cheap garbage like flat tummy diet teas and plush seal body pillows.

My advice: rule this one out of your guide to “marketing hacks.”

11 Impactful Pieces Of Career Advice For Agency Pros

By Christopher Tompkins

4Jun

Media Mentions

by Forbes Agency Council | Expert Panel

From books to blog posts to podcasts, there’s no shortage of career advice available out there for agency professionals. Sometimes, though, one stellar piece of wisdom they received rang especially true, helping to shape the trajectory of their career.

Whether you’re seeking insights on how to succeed in your work at an agency, specifically, or general career advice, it helps to listen to other leaders who have been in your shoes before. Below, 11 members of Forbes Agency Council share the best professional advice they’ve ever heard, and explain how it impacted their work.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com, on June 4, 2021. Read the rest of the article here.

How To Find And Keep Top Sales Talent: 15 Tips For Agency Owners

By Christopher Tompkins

1Jun

Media Mentions

by Forbes Agency Council | Expert Panel

Even with a highly competent, passionate and seasoned creative team, an agency that can’t make sales or land clients won’t survive. This is why it’s crucial for agencies to work toward attracting and keeping top sales talent on board.

Of course, it can be a real challenge to find and hire the best of the best. The most effective, successful salespeople can work in any industry and often have their choice of opportunities. Fortunately, there are steps agency owners can take to successfully recruit and retain top sales talent in a competitive market. Below, 15 members of Forbes Agency Council share their top tips for doing so.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com, on June 1, 2021. Read the rest of the article here.

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