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3 ways Google Performance Max campaigns boost paid search in 2022

Google recently released its Performance Max campaigns enabling businesses to advertise their ads across all of Google’s channels (Search, Display, Gmail, Maps, Discovery, YouTube, etc.) instead of creating specialized ads for each channel.

However, as with any automated advertising platform, it’s best to oversee and guide the overall strategic direction to ensure campaign success.

Join paid search experts from Adthena to learn three ways to boost your Google Performance Max campaigns to ensure they deliver real business results.

The post 3 ways Google Performance Max campaigns boost paid search in 2022 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Jason March 29, 2022 0 Comments

SEOTools and Software

Google Docs can write your meta descriptions

Was the meta description for this article written by Google? Or a human editor at Search Engine Land?

You can’t tell, can you? That’s how far machine learning has come. Read on the learn the “shocking” truth.

Auto-generating content summaries. Earlier this year, Google started automatically generating content summaries for Docs users. Google explains the technology behind how it works in this blog post if you want to dive into the natural language understanding (NLU) and natural language generation (NLG) of it all.

In short, based on the text of your document, Google will suggest a summary for you. You can choose to use the summary if it looks good to you, or you can edit the summary to be more to your liking.

This was interesting news because if there’s one thing I know from editing for 20+ years, it’s that people – even some great content writers – have a hard time condensing 1,000+ words into one or two short sentences or ideas that are optimized for search and act as a teaser to entice clicks (without giving away everything).

Testing out Google Docs summaries. I was curious to see how good Google Docs is at generating summaries, so I looked at my five most recent articles.

In short, Google Docs is surprisingly good at generating summaries. It’s by no means 100% perfect – but it’s at a level you’d expect from Google. I’m sure you already have seen Google’s intelligence at work in Gmail, offering responses to an email or suggesting how you should finish a sentence as you’re writing it.

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Here are the summaries Google Docs suggested for my articles:

Facebook warns publishers to avoid ‘watchbait’ tactics

Human: These tactics will result in fewer recommendations, less views and limited ranking. Learn how to avoid what Facebook considers watchbait.

Google: This article is about how to avoid watchbait in your videos. It’s important to know what Facebook considers watchbait and what you should do to avoid it.

Google’s is slightly long – and I’m not personally a fan of starting any meta description with “this article”. But this is pretty accurate. Swap “Learn” for “This article is about” and you’ve got a serviceable meta description. Thanks, Google.

TikTok testing search ads

Human: Many brands already know TikTok drives sales. TikTok search ads could help attract qualified traffic (and get valuable keyword data).

Google: This is a big deal. TikTok is testing search ads, and it’s a big opportunity for brands to attract qualified traffic.

This is probably the strongest summary of the bunch – the most “human” sounding. Also, it’s interesting that Google somehow determined this was a “big deal” because the words “big deal” never appear within the text.

Twitter adds keyword search to Direct Messages

Human: Good news for brands and businesses who use Twitter for customer service: you can now find DMs by searching for keywords.

Google: This is a long time coming. Twitter has been working on a DM search feature for some time, and now you can search your inbox by keywords.

Google’s summary is not the best ever. It’s long and feels a bit repetitive (e.g., using the word “time” twice). But at least it’s not wrong.

PPC salaries: How much in-house and agency search marketers make in 2022

Human: This data will help give you some bargaining power, whether you’re negotiating salary for a new role or seeking a raise from your employer.

Google: This survey looked at the median salaries for PPC specialists in the U.S. and the U.K. It was based on responses from 715 respondents.

This was easily the worst summary by Google. It’s boring. But more troubling: it’s inaccurate.

The survey itself didn’t look at only the median salaries. That’s just what I wrote about. Also, my article didn’t mention the UK, so I have no idea where it pulled that from. The survey actually was global.

So this one is a failure on Google’s part. The median salary issue is a “bigger context” issue that’s understandable – it can only output a summary based on what the author (me) has input. But the input/output theory wouldn’t explain the UK mention. That is just an oddball.

Meta rebrands automated ad products, shopping campaigns coming soon

Human: Meta is consolidating its products into the Meta Advantage suite, which allows advertisers to automate part of a – or an entire – campaign.

Google: This is just a simple rebrand and making clear which of its products are automated. However, the company is also coming out with a shopping campaign later this year.

Again, not awesome, not terrible, and fairly accurate. With a few tweaks, you’d have a decent meta description.

Why we care. I use Google Docs all the time to write content. But never have I considered it a tool for SEO. Until now. If you struggle to write compelling meta descriptions (or excerpts or summaries) for your website content, simply hit the + button next to Summary in Google Docs. Those auto-generated summaries aren’t perfect, but it is generally a great “rough draft” that can help you write a compelling meta description.

And even if you don’t use the summary Google generates (e.g., because it’s inaccurate, long, or has some other issue), that may be a big hint that you need to give your content another, deeper review. (You may also consider asking a friend, your editor, or someone else to review it.) Does it actually say what you meant or want it to? Because if Google (Docs) can’t understand it, it’s quite possible that when it publishes, neither will Google (search).

Wait! Who wrote the meta description for this article? I did. Google’s was just too long:

“This is a big deal. Earlier this year, Google started automatically generating content summaries for Google Docs users. The idea is to help content writers write compelling meta descriptions for their website content.”

But good to know that Google Docs thinks that this technology is also a big deal.

Summary, take two. The above summary generated by Google was on my rough draft version. After making my final edits, I deleted the summary from Google Docs, curious to see if it would generate a new summary, based on my revisions. It did:

“This is a pretty interesting technology that’s making its way into Google Docs. Google Docs automatically generates content summaries for you. I tested it out with five articles I’ve recently written and it was surprisingly good.”

First problem: too long. Second problem: the technology is already in Google Docs. If we delete the first sentence, it’s good.

And that seems to be the overall pattern for these auto-generated Google Docs summaries: good, but not great.

So, yes, Google Docs can help you write your meta descriptions, but more as a first attempt. Don’t expect Google Docs to generate a great meta description for you (you may have as much luck with a million monkeys banging on keyboards – eventually one of them is bound to produce a meta description worthy of Shakespeare). For now, anyway, human review, analysis, intuition and creativity are still essential job requirements.

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Jason March 29, 2022 0 Comments

ContentSponsored Content

Lessons in Buying Group Marketing – Learning to dance with your sales team

First, you walk. Then you run. What if, instead, you learned to dance?

While Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a key strategy today, going forward, B2B marketers will take a more holistic view. More of a dance than a race, marketing is evolving to look at the entire lifecycle and how to care for the customer relationship at each phase. Driven by this holistic approach, Forrester proclaims in its New Tech: Account-Based Marketing Q1, 2022 report that “the term Account-Based Marketing will disappear by 2025 as B2B organizations focus on the entire customer lifecycle.”

As part of this evolution: Buying Group Marketing (BGM). While ABM blankets your key accounts with messaging, BGM targets the specific people involved in purchase decisions at your key accounts. It does this through carefully crafted buying group personas and delivering custom campaigns to buying team members. It’s a person-based marketing approach versus an account-based one. BGM is about relationship building – externally and internally.

While that sounds great, the devil is in the details.

One of the keys to implementing a successful BGM strategy requires a fundamental paradigm shift in how you market. As Forrester reinforces in the New Tech report, “sales and marketing must come together to identify and prioritize buying groups for effective ABM.”

A lead isn’t something to be tossed over the wall at the MQL stage for sales to run with. Employing a BGM strategy, requires marketing and sales to work together at every stage of the customer lifecycle from awareness to deal and beyond.

If your marketing and sales alignment has looked more like a tussle than a dance in the past, it’s time to streamline your moves into elegant choreography. Here’s how you and sales can ditch your two left feet and learn to dance well together.

How BGM sales-marketing alignment works

Let’s set the scene with an example from the movie Dirty Dancing.

In this 80s classic, there is a scene where Baby (the main character) is learning to dance the Mambo with Johnny (the dance instructor). His usual partner, Penny is on the sidelines and can see that Baby is struggling to learn the steps. So, Penny steps in and guides Baby from behind while Johnny leads. And the three of them move together in fluid unison to the music until Baby gets the moves down and learns the dance.

How does this relate to Buying Group Marketing?

In an effective BGM strategy, Johnny represents the sales team, Penny represents the marketing team, and Baby is the prospect. Marketing and sales work together to guide the prospect into finding the right steps and rhythm that will help them succeed.

This is a fundamental shift in how sales and marketing has traditionally worked together. With BGM, marketing is no longer stuck on one side (or in Dirty Dancing… the corner) of the MQL wall but involved in all the stages of the process. Because of this, each department needs to know the steps and be able to dance together first. Then they can bring the prospect in and teach them to dance, too.

5 Steps to improve your marketing and sales alignment

Below are five key areas to help you improve your marketing and sales alignment for an effective BGM strategy:

1. Align goals and operations

To ensure that your funnel is unified, sales and marketing must have common goals and a common bench of metrics that deliver insights for continuous improvement. One of the first steps in the process is coming together to develop this operational backbone and to create service-level agreements, defining the goals and the lead management process from the top of the funnel to the bottom.

2. Share your data

Sales and marketing teams need to have access to all the same data and insights around contacts and accounts at the same time. This will prevent missteps and ensure that everything that is created is of value to your prospects and enhances their journey.

3. Orchestrate your messaging

Because the messaging in BGM is more highly targeted to buying group members, it’s important to team up and work through your air-cover narratives and carefully orchestrate them. The focus should be consistent messaging that is on-target for every successive stage of the funnel with the end goal of generating value for the buying team member.

4. Align your platform structure

Synergy across sales and marketing starts with your systems. The platforms that you choose to use for BGM, whether a CRM, marketing automation or sales engagement tool, should be engineered to share data, processes, messaging, goals and metrics.

5. Communicate continually

To execute a BGM strategy well, you will need to design a feedback loop between the sales and marketing organizations for regular communications regarding pain points and successes and for developing mechanisms to test and learn. Content is king, but context is everything because your data is shared. There should be an open communication loop to adjust campaigns for the context of the prospect along the way.

How a BGM approach helped a B2B industrial workforce platform close more deals

One B2B platform whose business is to digitize the industrial workforce took a Buying Group Marketing approach, using top-of-the-funnel advertising to close more deals.

This organization had a highly specialized audience that was particularly difficult to reach. While marketing did bring in some viable leads, the organization’s existing solution (that was based upon reverse IP look-up) was insufficient to produce high-quality leads. The result was nearly non-existent lead follow up by the sales team. The lack of follow up led to a strained relationship between sales and marketing.

There needed to be better alignment within the two teams and a more granular approach to marketing efforts. To do this, the marketing team used sales’ data to create highly customized advertising campaigns using Influ2.

Sales were delighted with the results, receiving immediate notifications about engagement on the ads from the contacts they had been trying to reach. They were also appreciative of the context-driven insights and lead prioritization that marketing was now able to deliver. And what started as a pilot was expanded globally.

Taking this approach helped the marketing and sales teams better collaborate. They defined the processes, determined the appropriate infrastructure, orchestrated their messaging, and openly communicated with each other to improve the pipe and close more deals.

A meaningful competitive advantage with BGM

According to Forrester, “Many organizations have already evolved or are evolving processes and technologies to account for buying groups; those organizations have a meaningful competitive advantage over those who do not.”

Buying Group Marketing is here to stay. While there are many components involved in building an effective BGM strategy, marketing and sales alignment is among the most important. These five steps will help you get started with your BGM marketing-sales alignment.

Remember: not stepping on each other’s toes is great. But you can do much more. Learn to dance with your sales team and help your prospects achieve their lift!

This sponsored article was written by Nirosha Methananda, VP of marketing, Influ2.

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Jason March 29, 2022 0 Comments

FacebookSocial

Facebook warns publishers to avoid ‘watchbait’ tactics

Every couple of years, Facebook has tried its best to crack down on clickbait in the Feed. Now Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is warning marketers to avoid a new tactic they call “watchbait.”

What is watchbait? According to Facebook, watchbait is video content that “intentionally withholds information, sensationalizes content, or misleads viewers into watching or engaging with the video.” Watchbait can happen in the title, caption, thumbnail or within the video itself.

Here are six examples Facebook cited as using watchbait:

His Reaction Was Priceless!!
THIS IS THE WORST WAY TO WAKE UP!!
And then his GF did this!!!
Absolutely mind-blowing details in the latest recipe from Kai!
Your bestie just sent a crazy message to your girlfriend!
SHOCKING weather phenomenon could explode your plans!!!

Facebook views watchbait and clickbait as basically the same thing. See the language Facebook used about clickbait when it cracked down on it in 2014, 2016 and 2018.

What will happen if a Page uses watchbait? If Facebook’s system detects watchbait in your video, the company says it will limit how often it is recommended and its ability to rank. If you regularly post watchbait, Facebook may reduce your page’s overall distribution.

You can read their Meta’s blog post and help doc on watchbait. But keep reading for quick “do this, not that” checklist to watchbait.

What not to do. In short, what should you avoid when publishing videos on Facebook? Don’t:

Omit key information
Use exaggeration
Use extreme language
Use excessive capitalization or emojis in the title
Create misleading expectations
Deceive users
Use Photoshopped or cropped images that aren’t taken from the video as your thumbnail
Portray staged, scripted or fake content as being real

What to do. So what should you do when publishing videos on Facebook? Do:

Use accurate, informative headlines
Add your voice
Be original
Be authentic
Use actual clips from the video as your thumbnail

Why we care. Watchbait results in disappointed or frustrated viewers, as Facebook noted. We all know that clickbait works – that’s why Facebook has to make changes like this every couple of years. Always make sure you’re giving something of value to your viewer – something that is relevant, helpful, useful, or inspiring. Deception may be great in the short-term or even expected in some specific industries, but the question you have to answer is: is it worth potentially damaging or destroying your reputation (and your discoverability and visibility) in the long run?

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Jason March 28, 2022 0 Comments

SocialTikTok

TikTok testing search ads

TikTok is starting to roll out ads within its search results. The video ads have a “Sponsored” label, are located above the “Others search for” section, within the top four results.

What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot of a TikTok search ad on the results page for [skincare routine], via a tweet from David Herrmann, president of Herrmann Digital, a paid social advertising company.

More details on TikTok search ads. The beta test was spotted and tweeted by Herrmann. He noted that once you can run ads in search results, you can pull the search terms for ads that converted and use those search terms with high click-through rates from search results as titles for your top-performing TikToks to drive additional value.

Keyword targeting is not yet available to TikTok advertisers, just placements, according to Herrmann. He added that the smart play for brands is making “how-tos” of their products that solve specific problems. For example:

How to use tea to fix your ____.
How to make ___ with tea.

“Make your ads solve problems, don’t just sell. Drive them to advertorial pages,” Hermann said. “This is Pinterest 2.0, but better cause people buy.”

What’s unclear. If TikTok search ads are only for managed accounts. According to Andrea Taylor, outreach and account manager at Clix Marketing, that’s what her rep told her.

We’ve reached out to TikTok with some follow-up questions on search ads.

Why we care. TikTok search ads provide a new opportunity to get in front of your target audience with high purchase intent. TikTok has been an influential platform for turning views into sales for many brands and products. Look no further than the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, which got billions of views. Tapped out on Google and other ad platforms? If TikTok search ads become available to you, consider testing out this platform. TikTok could also become a keyword goldmine, especially considering how many other platforms have taken away this data from marketers.

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Jason March 28, 2022 0 Comments

Google ShoppingSEO

Google Trusted Store badge for merchants with excellent shipping and returns services

Earlier we reported about the Google Shopping experience scorecard where Google said it would reward merchants that provide an “excellent customer experience” with “a boost in rankings,” “a badge” and “other benefits that will help consumers find your business,” within the Google Shopping tab in Google Search.

Google now announced this reward is through the “Trusted Store badge” that can be seen on free Google Shopping listings. Google said “merchants who provide excellent shipping and returns services, for example, may receive a badge indicating they’re a Trusted Store, which will appear alongside their free product listings on the Shopping tab.”

What the trusted store badge looks like. Here is a GIF of the trusted store badge in the Google shopping results:

The badge increases engagement. Google said the trusted store badge, “based on our early testing,” drive more clicks to the merchants listings, Google said they are “more likely to receive clicks.” Google also said the search company is “seeing stronger traffic to lesser-known merchants.”

How to earn the badge. Merchants receive a Trusted Store badge based on their performance across metrics relative to other merchants, including but not limited to shipping speeds, shipping and return costs, and return windows. We documented a lot of these metrics over here in our earlier coverage, but here is Google’s help document as well.

Launching in a few months in the US. Google said “the Shopping Experience Scorecard program and trusted store badge will roll out across the U.S. in the coming months.

New insights reports. To help merchants provide excellent customer service and to see how their product listings are performing. Google said “this new tool shows merchants the total traffic, impressions and conversion rate of their free listings, helping them make decisions about future ones.” Google will break down how well your product listings are doing, even with new conversion reporting on free listings. There is a pricing report to show you how your pricing competes with others in the market and reports on your top viewed products.

Here are some screenshots of these new insights reports:

Rings a bell. Does this trusted store badge ring a bell to you? Well, yes, a decade or so ago, Google had a free trusted store badge for merchants as well. This was more on the search ad side of the coin, whereas this new badge is for free product listings.

Why we care. Badges can help you generate more clicks on your listings, so it is worth looking into and gaining a badge if possible. The insights reports gives you more data on how your products are performing in Google Search and Google Shopping and how you compete with the current marketplace.

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Jason March 28, 2022 0 Comments

GoogleSEO

Google Search rolls out a more visual search interface on mobile with grid format

Google has rolled out a new mobile search interface that allows for a more visual look at some search results. A Google spokesperson told us this new interface helps “surface relevant information related to an image, so users have a deeper understanding of the results they’re seeing.”

Mobile only. The new interface is currently live for mobile searches on Google for select queries. You can try it for the query [hand tattoos] or [game room design] on your mobile device.

What it looks like. Here is a cropped screenshot of the new visual look, that shows images in a grid-like interface. If you want a full size screenshot, click here.

Two position ones? I asked Google if the top two results would be counted in Google Search Console performance reports as position one, or if the one on the left is position one and the one on the right is position two? Is that flipped for languages that go from right to left like Hebrew and Arabic? We will update this story when we hear back.

More updates. Google said it will continue to make improvements to the mobile and desktop search results. Last year, Google made several updates to the mobile interface design of search and also launched continuous scroll.

Why we care. This new layout in mobile search may help your site get more (or less) exposure in the search results. In these types of queries, you now have two side-by-side results, possibly from two different sides sharing the first position in a grid format.

This may impact your site traffic, click through rates and performance reports in Google Search Console.

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Jason March 26, 2022 0 Comments

Google MapsLocal

Google Maps blocked 100 million abusive business profile edits in 2021

Google has shared how it keeps information on its Google Maps platform “reliable,” saying that less than one-percent of the content seen in Google Maps is fraudulent or abusive. Google uses algorithms, machine learning and humans to control abuse, spam and other fraudulent business profile edits. All of this is done why Google saw an uplift of 30% in the number of of business edits and additions in 2021 then it saw in 2020.

As a reminder, last month, Google opened up on how it moderates reviews on Google Maps.

Spam fighting efforts. Google said it blocked more than 100 million abusive edits on Google Business Profiles by “fraudsters” who try to edit those listings. Here is a break down of those efforts as shared by Google:

Removed over 7 million fake Business Profiles on Google Maps. Google said more than 630,000 of those Business Profiles were removed through user reports.
Prevented 12 million attempts to create fake Business Profiles on Google Maps.
Stopped 8 million fraudulent attempts to claim Business Profiles on Google Maps.
Disabled over 1 million accounts due to policy-violating activity, such as online vandalism or fraud.
Removed or blocked 95 million policy-violating reviews, over 60,000 of which were taken down due to COVID-related instances.
1 million reviews were taken down through user reports.
Blocked or removed 190 million photos and 5 million videos that were blurry, low quality, or violated Google’s content policies.

You can compare these metrics to the Google 2020 local spam and abuse fighting efforts.

Why we care. Google Maps has historically been an area where Google had many spam and fraud issues over the years. It is good to see Google sharing some data on its efforts to reduce spam, reduce spam and reduce abuse in Google Maps and on Google Business Profiles.

This should help legitimate business and local SEOs do a better in local search and Google Maps overall and reduce overall stress of fraud and abuse on their listings and client listings.

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Jason March 24, 2022 0 Comments

Google MapsGoogle: SEOLocal

Google Search adds booking and appointment availability for healthcare providers

Google announced it will now show you some healthcare providers appointment availability and give you the ability to book an appointment directly through Google Search. This currently only works in the US and it seems to be limited to one pilot private, MinuteClinic at CVS, but Google hopes to expand this to additional providers in the future.

Hema Budaraju, the lead of Google Health and Social Impact, said Google Search is rolling out a feature “that shows the appointment availability for healthcare providers so you can easily book an appointment.” “You might see available appointment dates and times for doctors in your area,” Google wrote.

What this looks like. Here is a screenshot of the new “appointments” tab in the local pack that lets you filter to see healthcare providers that offer online booking options. It lets you pick various options for what medical attention you require:

Here is a GIF of it in action:

Which provides are included. Google said it is working with partners including MinuteClinic at CVS and a number of other scheduling solution providers. Google added that it “we hope to expand features, functionality and our network of partners so we can make it easier for people to get the care they need.”

Health in Search. A few months ago, Google enabled the ability to help you find healthcare providers that take your insurance coverage. So this is the next step in Google’s journey to help people with healthcare.

Why we care. Eventually, Google will open up these options to all healthcare providers and when they do, if you or your clients would benefit from this option, you will want to integrate these booking options and also insurance options, as soon as possible.

If you are using a scheduling or booking service for your medical practice, maybe reach out to them for an ETA on when they will be integrating with Google Search. We will keep you posted on this feature as it expands to other providers and solutions.

This can potentially lead to more visits and patients for your healthcare providers.

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Jason March 24, 2022 0 Comments

Analytics & Conversion

First-party data: 4 internal checks to make sure you’re ready

First-party data has become a bit of a buzzword in digital marketing. We need to accumulate it and account for it with the depreciation of the cookie, but that can take different forms and require different levels of technical execution.

The core difference between first-party data and third-party data is you own it. You built the relationship with the prospect that earned their consent to be tracked/have their contact info stored. You’re not using a bought list, nagging with remarketing just because a person visited your site or sharing data across domains outside the first party set.

The core questions every business needs to ask itself are:

Is the data first-party compliant?
Does the opt-in process build trust and engagement?
Are you getting the full value out of your first-party data?
Is this a short-term or long-term implantation?

1. Is the data first-party compliant?

There are two major considerations in first-party data compliance:

National and international laws
Integration with digital marketing channels

First and foremost, it’s important that your brand collect and legally store your first-party data. Both GDPR and CCPA have stringent requirements on storing data and its accessibility.

One of the universal requirements is hashing data. Hashing data converts your first-party data into a random series of numbers and letters while maintaining the core functionality. You can use advertising tools like customer lists without compromising your prospects/clients’ privacy.

Most ad platforms and CRMs will automatically do this for you. The only operational concern is when you need to download a list and share it with a team member/vendor. You can avoid this by sticking to existing data sync integrations (Zapier can be helpful if you need to create a custom one). That said, if there is no other option, the following protocols should be put in place to protect the data:

User log-ins getting access should be protected with two-factor or multi-factor authentication.
User data should not be stored on personal computers.

The other big consideration is tracking. Sites using Google Analytics must use global site tags (which allow for GDPR compliant modeling) and language affirming the user consents to being tracked. The user must see the levels of tracking and opt into what they want (instead of opting out).

Another significant consideration for brands is their domain structure. Google confirmed that brands are allowed five domains as part of their first-party data set. First-party data sets dictate which domains can share analytics and tracking data.

If you’re using a lot of vanity domains or country-specific domains, you will need to consider the pros and cons of consolidating into a sub-domain or subcategory structure. The biggest consideration is whether the data loss will be big enough of a con to outweigh the SEO fluctuations that come from migration. Regardless of which path you choose, you will need to make sure any paid traffic is on no_index/no_follow.

2. Does the opt-in process build trust and engagement?

On-site tracking consent forms are essential for website design and CRO (conversion rate optimization). A lot goes into successfully securing user consent from the wording to the placement.

The core needs are:

Simple and easy to understand permissions on tracking.
A link to the privacy/cookie policy.
The ability to accept or decline tracking.

Getting creative with the language can help inspire brand affinity. However, the clarity of the message must be maintained.

HubSpot does this well with their verbiage:

“We use cookies to make Hubspot’s website a better place. Cookies help provide a more personalized experience and relevant advertising for you and web analytics for us. To learn more about the different cookies we’re using, check out our cookie policy (baked goods not included).”

It does a great job of disarming the user, and the design makes consenting to cookies a hard-to-miss CTA (call to action). That said, it leads with the brand benefits instead of user benefits, which could prevent users from accepting tracking.

Going simple has its advantages, though – as NinjaCat displays:

“By clicking ‘Accept All Cookies,’ you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.”

The additional step of letting folks see exactly what cookies they will be opting into is helpful as well:

While this approach doesn’t scream branded tone, the transparency and ease of use are powerful tools in securing tracking consent.

If there’s one complaint about the NinjaCat approach, the cookie tracking consent element is small and on the bottom of the page. There is no hard answer on which approach is better. However, it is important to account for human behavior. Most people read from left to right, from the top down. A small consent element at the bottom might get missed. It’s important to test what works best for you.

3. Are you getting the full value out of your first-party data?

First-party data has a lot of utility. From targeting audiences to tracking user behavior and interests, there’s a lot of value to harvest. It can be easy to fall into the trap of using data for only one channel or not sharing the resource across departments.

When setting up your customer lists, make sure you’re configuring them in a way that can be easily synced into all ad platforms. The easiest way to do this is to use email addresses for targeting. However, this will impede the match rate (will remain closer to 70%).

It’s important to note that LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter have different field orders. Be sure that you’re setting up the sync in a way that won’t break the system.

Using these audiences across channels can help continue the conversation and find new prospects. Similar audiences (Google and Microsoft) will be created automatically. Lookalike (Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn) requires you to manually create them.

Based on how you’ve set up your domains, you’ll be able to share analytics and tracking data across your teams. This will enable you to craft better customer journey messaging and maintain attribution.

4. Is this a short-term or long-term implantation?

As you decide on the right actions for your business to be first-party data ready, it’s important to balance short- and long-term impact.

If your current domain structure doesn’t lend itself to the five domain maximum for first-party data sets, you will need to decide whether you migrate. Migrations might make perfect sense long term, but they will be expensive and disruptive in the short term. Testing a cookie consent element will be a much easier change to implement, but the impact is dependent on getting enough traffic for statistical significance.

Ensure that you’re communicating timelines of changes and coordinating with your teams. A good example of this is the need for 2FA/multi-factor authentication in ad networks. Before making the switch, it’s crucial all practitioners have turned on that setting and have access to their means of authenticating.

Key takeaway

First-party data is the path to profit in the privacy-first web. Ensuring compliance is crucial, but that doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice user engagement.

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Jason March 24, 2022 0 Comments