Plus a list of the top performing Valentine’s Day video ads

Chris Wood on February 18, 2022 at 10:12 am

Good morning, Marketers, the times are changing and so are the traditional media and technologies we’ve used for years.

Before the pandemic, I admit I wasn’t that impressed with finding a QR code on a magazine ad. At that time, I was probably also questioning my resilience in consuming a form of print media. 

I also wasn’t listening to podcasts regularly back then because I hadn’t yet acquired smart speakers, and I found earbuds intrusive and distracting. Now, while spending more work and recreational time at my residence, the speakers are always going.

That’s the user side. What about the shifts in backend technology that are making QR codes, podcasts and even print ads something different in 2022? 

What’s changed is that the cookie is fading, so publishers and streaming services are upping their identity, measurement, attribution and targeting capabilities. These really aren’t the same media from even a couple years ago because all the old channels and tools are changing.

Chris Wood,

Editor

Shorts

Before all the chocolates get eaten and the long stem roses wilt, let’s have a look at the top performing Valentine’s Day video ads, according to ad automation platform AcuityAds:

1. Victoria’s Secret, “Feel the Love” (6,650,287 views)
2. Pandora Jewelry, “Celebrate Your Little Acts of Love” (4,573,790 views)
3. The Bouqs Company, “Valentine’s Day 2022” (4,126,349 views)
4. Swarovski, “For the One You Love” (3,193,447 views)
5. Teleflora, “Love Out Loud Truck” (2,885,657 views)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris WoodChris Wood draws on over 15 years of reporting experience as a B2B editor and journalist. At DMN, he served as associate editor, offering original analysis on the evolving marketing tech landscape. He has interviewed leaders in tech and policy, from Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama as the country’s first federal CIO. He is especially interested in how new technologies, including voice and blockchain, are disrupting the marketing world as we know it. In 2019, he moderated a panel on “innovation theater” at Fintech Inn, in Vilnius. In addition to his marketing-focused reporting in industry trades like Robotics Trends, Modern Brewery Age and AdNation News, Wood has also written for KIRKUS, and contributes fiction, criticism and poetry to several leading book blogs. He studied English at Fairfield University, and was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He lives in New York.

ouTube’s roadmap for this year includes enhancements to Shorts and more robust shopping experience features.

George Nguyen on February 11, 2022 at 2:51 pm

YouTube is emphasizing enhancements to it Shorts feature as well as laying out plans to improve shopping experiences in a blog post by Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan setting out its 2022 roadmap. While Mohan did not go into specific detail, he did provide a useful overview of what to expect from YouTube this year.

Shorts. YouTube plans to keep adding features to its Shorts format, the platform’s answer to TikTok and Instagram’s Reels. In addition to new effects and editing tools, YouTube plans to introduce the ability to reply to individual comments by creating another Short (similar to TikTok).

YouTube is also exploring monetization options for this format. In the coming months, it plans to test BrandConnect for Shorts creators, integration of the Super Chat feature (in which viewers can purchase visually distinct chat messages) as well as the ability to shop directly from a Short.

New insights for creators. New insights will be added to YouTube Studio. Mohan did not go into detail about what to expect from these new analytics capabilities other than that they’re meant to help “generate concrete content ideas for upcoming videos.”

More robust shopping experiences. Shopping capabilities will expand via shoppable videos, Live Shopping and via the user interface of the YouTube app.

Other updates for brands and creators. Channel guidelines, which can help creators influence the tone of conversations on their channel, are currently being tested.

Collaborative livestreaming will also be introduced, enabling creators to go live with other creators.

And, YouTube has begun testing gifted memberships, which allow viewers to purchase channel memberships for other viewers in a livestream.

Read next: How TikTok influenced one of the top performing video ads of 2021

Why we care. Don’t underestimate the growing impact on marketing of the short-form video format represented by YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and, of course, Tik Tok. TikTok, of course, saw its audience nearly double in 2020 and although Google and Meta moved competitively against it, it’s clear to most users that a lot of what Shorts and Reels do is replicate the TikTok experience. And although it’s frowned on, it’s clear that a lot of TikTok creators are simply using Reels and Shorts to expand the reach of their TikTok content.

The new Shorts features may help it compete against TikTok and Instagram. Being able to reply via a Short can keep users engaged on the platform for longer. And, monetization options for creators may also help drive adoption as well as influencer marketing opportunities on YouTube.

Additional reporting by Kim Davis

Whether you’re just starting to explore B2B influencer marketing efforts or you’re well on your way to putting influencer content in place, there are myriad articles that can help you plot out the major steps to success. However, many of those articles don’t quite dive deep enough into some of the often overlooked yet oh-so-critical details that happen in between those big steps. 

Sometimes, that understanding comes from experience. In this case, it comes from our experience, and we’re happy to share it so you can avoid common mistakes and missteps along your B2B influencer path to success.

You Need More B2B Influencer Meetings Than You Are Thinking

Whenever anyone talks about the process of getting B2B influencer marketing efforts off the ground, they make it sound like all you need is to identify influencers, reach out, agree on the scope and then content magically appears. While that process is kind of true, it’s also not the whole picture either. It actually leaves out a plethora of meetings.

No one wants another meeting on their calendars, but conducting a lot of the right meetings is essential for B2B influencer marketing success. Instead of one big meet-and-greet-scoping-contracting-kickoff meeting, schedule smaller, more intentional meetings:

• Initial meet-and-greet: You’re forming a new business relationship, so use this time to get to know the influencer on a personal and professional level. Talk about what they like to create, what they don’t like to create, the topics they usually cover, their upcoming availability and overall bandwidth. Also, let them get to know you and/or your team, too.
• Vision/goal setting meeting: After the meet-and-greet call, come back to the table with some initial ideas and options for how you and the influencer can work together, but make sure there’s room for the influencer to ideate and brainstorm, too. This should be the time you both talk about goals for working together.
• Formal scoping call: Once you and the B2B influencer are on the same page for the vision and goals, put together a formal scope of work based on your conversation. Be sure to include essential information, like what exactly is being created, when and for how much. Then, go through all of it, together. Make sure any gray area is cleared up and all questions are answered.
• Official project kickoff: Formally kickoff the project(s) to signify the official start of the scope. Get on the same page about deadlines, assign a main point of contact for the influencer, and set creation expectations. While this seems like it might be over-the-top, it’s also creating a fresh start and giving everyone clear direction on how and when to move forward.
• Regular check-in meetings (as needed): Depending on the final B2B influencer scope, you may want to have weekly, biweekly or monthly check-ins, just to make sure you’re on the same page and give yourselves the opportunity to talk through any details or issues that may come up along the way.

Of course, your meeting cadence and schedule will be completely dependent on what you’re using B2B influencer marketing for and what the scope of engagement looks like. Just be prepared to have a lot more meetings than you might think are necessary. 

Also, remember to keep every meeting focused on accomplishing next steps or a specific set of goals. That way, meetings will never feel excessive and they’ll be more like working sessions instead.

Tailor Your B2B Influencer Marketing Ask to the Influencer’s Talents

Not all influencers are writers. Not all influencers are speakers. Not all influencers are social media and content marketing strategists. It’s actually incredibly rare to find a B2B influencer who can do it all, so don’t jump into B2B influencer conversations with the expectation that they can. Instead, tailor your content to their talents.

While this may seem obvious, it can be hard to remember when you have a big vision and finally find a B2B influencer who is a great match for your goals and organization or get wrapped up in brainstorming. Of course you’re going to want them to create all the amazing things and be part of exciting co-creation efforts! They also might feel pressured to live up to those expectations or feel like it’s a deal-breaker if they can’t, so don’t put them out there to begin with.

Just keep in mind that you likely aren’t the world’s best writer, editor, videographer, speaker, social strategist and content marketing specialist all rolled into one, so don’t expect your B2B influencers to be the same either.

Be Prepared to Get B2B Influencer Content in Other Ways

Let’s say you have tailored the influencer marketing ask to the influencer’s talents, but they don’t have the bandwidth to take on a huge ebook project, or the availability to put together a full webinar, or even the time to put together a blog series. That’s ok, because you can get creative with how B2B influencers can create and contribute:

• Interview B2B influencers: Have them get camera-ready and sit down for an old-fashioned interview. Give them questions that can help you get the content you need to piece together an ebook, a social series, blogs and more. As a bonus: because they’re camera-ready, you can slice up and reuse the recordings of that interview, with influencer permission, of course.
• Have them record short-form videos: B2B influencer contributions don’t have to be massive all the time. Simply having a great idea + short-form video can be really powerful. This is exactly what Oracle Marketing Cloud’s did for their On the Fly series, where B2B influencers recorded short pieces of marketing advice while on the go in airports, train stations and more.
• Use a staff writer to work with the influencer: Sometimes you might just have to help the B2B influencer get their thoughts out of their head and onto paper, which may take a staff writer working directly with them. In this scenario, have the writer set up multiple working sessions with the B2B influencer. Then, the staff writer can bring the influencer’s own words to life.

Yes, it might be ideal to have B2B influencers create and deliver their own content from start to finish, but that just might not be possible all the time. Thankfully, there are plenty of backup options to still get that great B2B influencer-originated content.

Treat B2B Influencers Like a Contractor and a Client

While you may technically be “hiring” a B2B influencer, they don’t work for you. They’re working with you. Instead of viewing the relationship as you hiring someone to create content, look at your B2B influencers more like contractors or clients. It’s a mutual working relationship that takes a lot of work, and they have other clients and a whole other business of their own to run, too.

Also, B2B influencers are very, very connected to a much larger network, and they know through the grapevine who is great to work with and who they wouldn’t work with again. 

Need Help with Making Your B2B Influencer Marketing Successful?

Our team of strategists are here to help you. Contact us today.

SEO Trends for 2022: How to Get on Top of Google Search

Authors:

SEO is one of the youngest marketing disciplines out there, and it’s also incredibly fast-paced. It looks almost nothing like what it did when we started.

While the fundamental principle remains the same — SEO is about making websites easy to find and understand — the tactics involved are very different than they were 15, 5, and even 1 year ago

So what are the most important SEO trends for 2022 and how can you implement them?

Here’s what you should know for 2022, as well as key steps for implementing these trends and tactics.

SEO Trend #1: SERP Marketing and Content Diversification

For years now, Google has been taking steps to become a destination, not just a discovery project. With knowledge graphs, quick answers, and interactive and visual results, Google is building an ultimate resource that can give comprehensive answers to any query.

Within one search result page, we see:

1. Google.com/Travel suggestions
2. Knowledge graph (that includes maps, user reviews, basic facts, etc.)
3. Related videos (This search element is interactive because you can scroll through the carousel to see more videos)
4. “People Also Ask” results (This box is also interactive: You can click any question to read answers and expand follow-up questions. Interestingly, a question you click determines the topic of further questions that appear. I find this quite eye-opening.)
5. The visual results including more similar destinations, related searches, and more
6. Organic “text” results which are somehow lost in-between

This is where the concept of “SERP marketing” lies: You need to stop focusing on organic listings and start optimizing for all the other search elements, including videos, images and “quick-answer” sections (“People Also Ask” and featured snippets).

You need to take each individual search result page as a whole to achieve brand visibility there.

How to Dominate Google with SERP Marketing

There’s a lot to be done to create an effective SERP Marketing campaign. Here are some steps to get you started:

Analyze Your Current Opportunities

At IMN, we are building an ultimate SERP marketing tool that helps you determine all important content formats that needs to be created to dominate your target queries:

The tool uses your current rankings to show where you are missing out. Use this tool to understand your current opportunities better and optimize for those.

Set Up Content Collaboration Strategy

Content diversification brings in both challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, you need to continually come up with quality content assets in various formats, which is incredibly hard to scale. On the other hand, you get to leverage more mediums and try more tools and tactics, which is pretty awesome.

Content collaboration is the tactic that can solve many issues and empower your marketing with more benefits, including natural backlinks, trust and shares. And the good news is there are great projects that help you build contacts to co-create content and scale it.

Of course, unified communication is a big part of it, especially post-covid when most companies have moved to remote operations.

BizSwipe is one example that allows you to easily build B2B connections for content co-creation and marketing collaboration. You can use advanced filters and easy connection tools to find partners and influencers who can help you diversify your content strategy:

Organize Your Strategy Using an Editorial Calendar

For content collaboration and co-marketing opportunities, consider using an editorial calendar solution that will help you organize your campaigns.

ContentCal is a marketing collaboration platform that can help you organize your omni-channel content marketing strategy and boost its effectiveness:

Use its “Content Campaigns” feature to schedule your upcoming content assets and put all the ideas, goals and tasks in each campaign brief.

Creating a central dashboard for all your content plans to be visible for your whole team is key to consistent and effective content strategy. With ContentCal each team member responsible for a single piece of the puzzle will be able to see and contribute to the whole picture.

At the end of the day, content diversification lies at the foundation of omnichannel marketing that has multiple benefits (including cross-device compatibility, smoother shopping experience, creation of more marketing channels and more). So you may want to start working on it whether you are worried about your search visibility or not.

SEO Trend #2: Rich Results

Google search results are becoming increasingly richer and more interactive.

The good news is that this gives SEOs a competitive advantage over those website owners who are not keeping up with Google’s moves.

As an example, here’s what FAQPage schema looks like in search results once you implement it:

This search snippet is interactive — you can click any question to unfold the answer, and from there, even get to the site for more answers:

How to Implement Structured Data

There are many tools, plugins and solutions, allowing any website owner to implement structured markup with no technical knowledge required.

Check out a few options:

• Here are free Schema markup generators and how to use each one
• Here are WordPress plugins that support Schema

SEO Trend #3: Mobile and Voice Search

Voice search is no longer a trend. It is a habit. Most of us are routinely asking questions to a mobile device or a smart speaker. It is something that has become part of our lives.

Obviously, mobile search is going strong, and we have many sources to confirm that, including:

• Back in 2015, Google revealed that more people were using mobile search than desktop search in 10 countries, including the US and Japan
• In 2018, more than half of website traffic in the US was coming from mobile devices
• Last year consumers spent three and a half hours a day on their mobile devices

Google switched its priorities by introducing Mobile-First Index, which means that Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking. In other words, if your page doesn’t look good on a mobile device, or if the mobile version has less content, you may lose rankings in both mobile and desktop search results.

Given that mobile device users often use voice search to find answers while on the go, it is safe to assume that voice search is getting popular, and these two trends are very well connected:

• Both mobile and voice users are likely to be looking for answers while in the middle of the task (so they need clear, concise answers right away)
• In both of the cases, the top result (which is often the featured snippet) is really what matters. So we are competing for the top result now, versus top 5 positions as we did a few years ago

How to Optimize Your Site for Mobile and Voice Search

• Obviously, make your site mobile-friendly and fast (page speed is important!)
• Adapt your content strategy to catch those featured snippet opportunities to outrank your competitors. Mobile users seldom have time to scroll, and with voice search there’s only one result being read to the user. This makes featured snippet optimization incredibly essential for your online visibility — you are either there or nowhere.

There’s a lot to featured snippet optimization (which deserves a whole separate article which I already did), but it all comes down to:

• Researching current featured snippets for your important queries (and learning from them)
• Structuring your content with H2-H3 subheadings that address questions behind queries triggering featured snippets
• Providing quick, concise answers (no longer than 90 characters) below each subhead for Google to grab and feature.

If you include these steps in your writing guidelines for your content creators to use, you are halfway there:

• Use this writing checklist that includes both of the above (and more useful) guidelines
• Scale your content creation process using Narrato to build a team of content creators that do a good job following those guidelines. The beauty of this platform is that it matches you to the most suitable writers automatically. After some time, you have a solid team that knows your requirements and creates content fast. In an era when you need a lot of content, and you need it fast, this is a life-saver:

WHILE YOU’RE HERE

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SEO Trend #4: Semantic Search and Intent Optimization

Google moved away from exact-matching keyword optimization years ago, yet our industry is somewhat slow to keep up. These days, Google doesn’t use the actual string of words that are being typed in the search box. Instead, it looks at the query context and analyzes the possible search intent to deliver results.

You can see this all around the SERPs and even in Google Suggest results. I wrote a detailed article on semantic search, and here’s one of the examples from it:

Notice how Google interprets the query on the fly to realize:

• You may have lost your cat, but you may be interested in pet and animal control centers, not just cat facilities
• Your cat may have gone missing in the town of Halfmoon but it has legs, so chances are you may be able to find the cat in the nearby towns, including Clifton Park and Rensselaer
• You may also post on Craigslist or search there in case someone already found it—which is an absolutely awesome idea!

What does this tell us?

Google has got very good at understanding searcher intent, and old-school content creation methods that focus on a single keyword string don’t work.

We need to create content that solves problems. That’s what Google is after, and so are our potential customers.

How to Optimize Content for Semantic Search and Search Intent

Simply Searching Google to get an idea of how it is interpreting a query is a great first step. Do the same type of research I did with that cat missing query. Look for other ways Google is trying to solve the problem for the user.

Using semantic research tools is another good idea. Text Optimizer is an intent optimization platform that helps you cluster any search query into related concepts and entities. It uses Google’s search snippets to come up with ideas to expand your initial copy to provide more solutions and meet Google’s and its users’ needs:

Based on semantic research, it will even help you build sentences based on common co-occurrence analysis of the terms you select:

If you are using a remote team of content writers or Narrato, it is a good idea to run TextOptimizer before creating your assignment and provide your writers with the list of concepts to cover.

SEO Trend #5: The Power of E-A-T vs Domain Names

For years, SEO has relied on a low-hanging fruit: The power of a chosen domain name:

• Keywords in domains names did wonders to your rankings
• Domain age and previously accumulated authority did wonders to your rankings

Both of those signals were pretty easy to fake: You could invest into buying a well-established domain or buy a keyword-rich domain name by sacrificing on its “brandability”.

These days, your domain name has no direct impact on your rankings. Thanks to its smarter algorithm and knowledge graph, Google can tell if there’s a real entity behind the domain and determine each page EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).

The road to higher rankings is no longer fast or predictable. You need to keep building an established brand, work on your trustability and collective authorship. Your domain name is still important but mostly indirectly: How memorable is it and how easy is it to associate your business with your niche?

Generating a business name is more important than finding a keyword-rich domain name. Building a strong brand and becoming an entity is more important than finding an established domain name. Page experience signals are more important than clicks. It’s all about focusing on real metrics now!

Now, You Are Ready to Rock 2022, Contact us to get you ranking high!

SEO is moving fast — it is a very exciting industry to be in. From the earlier days on, those people who were fast to “get it” found themselves ahead of slower-moving competitors. Use the tools and tips above to get ahead of yours in 2022 and beyond!

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