The Captain's Log: Insights from below deck March 2022

Harnessing Performance Max campaigns

Google has released a new form of campaigns for its Google Ads platform. The new Performance Max campaigns aim to provide seamless and automated advertising across all its online platforms. This includes YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Along with this, Performance Max campaigns will provide the platform for the next generation of Smart Shopping and Local campaigns.

The reported benefits of Performance Max campaigns include increased exposure due to seamless advertising across all of Google’s products and improved objective selection as Performance Max learns more about your market. You’ll also get deeper insights from improved reporting and better manual inputs, which helps the AI behind Google Ads learn your market and objectives quicker.

Bing Ads introduce dynamic descriptions

Recently launched, Bing Ads now offer a dynamic description function to its PPC offering. A totally new idea for PPC campaigns, the descriptions in the ads are dynamically generated, pulling content from the website to which they link. Bing will then measure and track how users engage with these ads and constantly refine the content, ensuring that they are always providing the best ROAS possible.

Facebook quickly expands Reels functionality

There was a time where Facebook seemed to be a fact of life and that everyone had an account. But in reality, platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are growing at a much quicker and greater rate than Facebook, likely because of their short video, or Reel, functionalities. In a response to this, Facebook has rolled out its Reel functionality, previously only available in the US, to over 150 countries. Along with this, the platform is making revenue generation for creators more accessible, potentially in a bid to attract them back to the platform, which in turn could lead to greater engagement.

Content that thinks outside the box (and in every corner of it)

As we approach the end of the first quarter, it’s a great time to carry out an audit on your content and really look at what could be improved. Brands have settled nicely into the new year – so far so normal – but what are you doing to really shake things up where your content is concerned? A content audit ahead of your next content-planning session will highlight your best-performing pages, as well as the weaker ones, so you can identify what needs updating or repurposing, and how to make your content work even harder. But don’t just stop there. Content marketing requires more than just copywriting skills. Utilise all expertise at your disposal for maximum engagement. Copywriting, design, SEO, social, web dev and video know-how all play an integral part in any successful content marketing strategy. Even your audience and customers should make up part of your content output (think reviews and user-generated content). Consider for quarter two content planning: how are you going to level up your content game?

Challenging industries helps to upskill the TBB team

As our client range broadens, we’re learning more about the software, platforms and organisations we work with on a daily basis. As we have clients that operate in niche sectors, we’re frequently finding new barriers to market that we didn’t know existed. Did you know that you can’t just sell everything that you like on Shopify? Take CBD oils, for instance – you can get these products off the shelves in supermarkets, but if you want to sell them online, it would seem it’s a big no-no. Certain payment gateways don’t process transactions for it. It’s seen to be too new and ‘controversial’. Similarly, paid advertising for these products has serious limitations too. A positive takeaway, however, is we’re being challenged as marketing professionals to find ways to bring these products to market in an efficient and cost-effective way. Working in these burgeoning industries is upskilling the team as a whole.