Weekly Marketing Insights and News Digest (07-13 September)

Does Facebook recommend you ‘bad’ ads over good ones? How to get into the Google Ads during the holiday seasons? Is it important to include your brand in your title tags? How to deal with drama properly? This and much more from the world of digital marketing in our new episode of the RGray Weekly Marketing Insights and News Digest.

• Are curious about why Facebook is serving poor-performing ads over standout ones sometimes, even though there’s an algorithm that decides which of your ads to serve? Take a look at our article to see what is the reason. 

• Frankie Quiroz, whose recent Google campaigns made $468k at 6.5x ROAS for his branded, print-on-demand store, shares some interesting points to be aware of when getting into the Google Ads during this season. Check them out in our article!

• Should you include your brand in your title tags? Sounds confusing? See four factors determining whether you should have these boilerplate features in your title, in our digest below.

• Xbox dealing with scandal in the highly professional way, showed the marketers worldwide that there is always a possibility to capitalize on drama. What happened and how is that possible? Read more about it in our article. 

1. Is Facebook trying to sabotage you?

If you’re advertising on Facebook, you know there’s an algorithm that decides which of your ads to serve, and it’s designed to optimize your income – Facebook shouldn’t, in principle, serve poor-performing ads over standout ones. True?

Andrew Faris and Gil Davis had a conversation in a Twitter thread about why Facebook could sometimes recommend your ‘bad’ ads over your good ones. 

Here’s a rundown of the talk:

• Facebook’s algorithm is more complex than a couple of numbers. Andrew pointed out that while it might seem that Facebook isn’t accurately optimizing the campaigns, the algorithm is far more complicated than a few KPIs. It’s trying to predict future success, and there may be something you’re not taking into account.

• If you’ve got a small purchase sample, it can be hard to tell what’s what. 

Two of Gil David’s ads for the same sale produced a similar CPC, but one of the ads had a significantly higher CVR and AOV. As Andrew has pointed out, this is very difficult to stay consistent with a larger ad budget – often requiring luck and chance!

If the ad spent on your Facebook campaigns looks suspicious, try considering the advice before you panic! The Facebook algorithm doesn’t always know best, and flukes do occur – so it’s generally wise to analyze anything before making drastic changes.

2. Creating Google campaigns that sell

Marketers are preparing for Q4 madness, and the vast majority is almost ready to go for some alternatives to Facebook – particularly looking at what occurred on Facebook in the holiday seasons of 2018 and 2019.

Frankie Quiroz, whose latest Google ads made $468k for his branded, on-demand-print store at 6.5x ROAS, shared a post with some relevant tips on how to get into the Google Ads during this season:

• Google is keen on simplicity: Simplify your campaigns, ad sets, and advertising.
• Generate more than 3 ads per ad set, but it should be a maximum of 5-10 ad sets per campaign.
• Learn and study the various bidding options with various budgets: Frankie says he begins by bidding $1 per click. Then he analyzes the keyword results and if they don’t give impressions, then he raises the bid.
• Take only one branded store ad account – don’t mix and match.
• Start your CPC bidding campaigns first. If they earn more than 30 sales profitably then shift to Automated Bidding.
• Evaluate your competition and launch ads on Google to outperform the organic performance of your competitors.
• Longer keywords have lower search volume but show more clear intent.
• Don’t stop at Google Search Ads. Run Google Shopping Ads and YouTube and Display Ads. Frankie says they use Display Ads for heavy retargeting.

These are some effective practices for giving your Google campaigns a head start!

3. Should you include your brand in your title tags?

Sounds confusing?

Most sites have their brand and other text included in the title tags, such as category, product name, author tag, and taglines. This is known as boilerplate material. Four aspects are determining whether or not you should have these boilerplate features in your title.

Let’s take a look at them.

• Brand strength: Well-known brand names almost always work better in titles than unknown brands. Amazon’s brand recognition provides a boost to include “Amazon” in each title. Less recognizable brands will lead to fewer visits based on relevance, length, and clickability.

• Relevancy: Are your keywords for boilerplate / brand important for what your users are looking for? If yes, then don’t hesitate and make sure you included them!
• Length: Generally speaking, long boilerplate can do more damage than short boilerplate / brand terms. Long boilerplate may dilute title significance.
• Clickability: Words such as “Sale,” “Solved,” “Free,” “2020,” “New” will increase the click rate. Often you can’t say before you try, but adding clickable elements to your boilerplate can bring significant gains. 

These four points should be useful while answering this question. What you just have to know, though? Test some modifications on your platform! Maybe, before trying, you want to assess your boilerplate brand strength and relevance.

How to assess your brand strength and the importance of the boilerplate.

“For each piece of boilerplate, determine the number of URLs on your site that rank/receive traffic for those keywords.”

It is showed how to do it in the Search Console:

+   Here’s what you want to do: Calculate the number of URLs on your 

A site that ranks / receives traffic for those keywords for each piece of boilerplate.

So if your brand gets a lot of queries, for example, it means you have a strong presence. And then the title tags should contain the company name.

Do this for categories, product categories, or other keywords and the results will show their importance.

However, we always suggest testing!

4. Xbox showed everyone the proper way to handle drama on social media

Dealing with social media issues is one of the biggest challenges marketers bump into. It’s crucial to deal with the scandal until it bursts into a wildfire of negativity and destroys sales figures.

Details about one of Xbox’s new consoles, the Series S were leaked yesterday morning. However, Xbox handled the leak in an artful and expert way.

Here are more details:

• Details about the upcoming Xbox Series S were leaked yesterday in the morning and Xbox had to decide on how to handle the situation right away, as the news already hit the tech blogs.
• In less than three hours, Xbox published an Awkward Look Monkey meme, which was a brilliant first move.

• Then, during an hour after the meme was posted, Xbox decided that there is no point to ignore what is already being out and tweeted an official confirmation.
• Finally, a few hours after the official announcement, Xbox revealed even more details about the console and capitalized on the hype because of the initial scandal.

What’s so significant? Xbox addressed the console leak with humor and authenticity, which created attention on social media and earned some interest in the gaming community. If your company is on social media, it is crucial to learn how to handle unforeseen circumstances like this one.