On Our Radar | April 2023 | TwoSix Digital

GOOGLE RELEASES ADS TRANSPARENCY CENTER | LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGE SCHEDULING IS HERE | PINTEREST IS PRO-SUSTAINABILITY | DID YOU EXPORT YOUR UNIVERSAL ANALYTICS DATA | WANT PEOPLE TO SEE YOUR TWEET? THAT’LL BE $8/MONTH | TIKTOK INTRODUCES KEYWORD INSIGHTS

To combat the world of ever-changing digital marketing –  the TwoSix team is here to give you what’s On Our Radar for April. This month, we discuss Google’s new Ad Transparency Center, LinkedIn updates, exporting Universal Analytics Data, and more! Keep reading to find out what we’re keeping On Our Radar for April 2023.

GOOGLE RELEASES ADS TRANSPARENCY CENTER

The Ads Transparency Center will provide more information about the advertisers who serve you ads through the Google network. The new global advertiser identity verification program requires Google advertisers to verify information about their businesses, where they operate from and what they’re selling or promoting. The My Ad Center portal was launched last year and it’s the newest and most user-centric way to help you control the ads you see on Google Search and YouTube.

You can find ads previously served by an organization in the Transparency Center and even change or update some of your ad preferences in the My Ad Center portal.

Access the Ads Transparency Center here.

Dave Serino Founder & Chief Strategist

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LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGE SCHEDULING IS HERE & MORE!

The wait is over. We finally have a native scheduling tool on LinkedIn Company Pages. This is HUGE! No more third-party applications are needed to schedule your posts on your company page. Now, it will be easier than ever to get on a consistent content plan for each month, schedule your posts, and get out of the way. You should be trying to get at least 1-3 posts out on LinkedIn each week. There benefit to it too, because LinkedIn is actually the one network that still seems to have a significant amount organic (free) reach. Definitely worth doing if you’re not already.

The key to LinkedIn is to drive traffic to fire the LinkedIn Insight Tag which will allow you to build audiences that you can nurture toward conversion among meeting planners, sports planners, and group travel operators. If you need some help developing your LinkedIn strategy don’t hesitate to reach out to contact us.

Additionally, LinkedIn also added a feature to allow Company Pages to follow other Company Pages. What a concept! Now you can follow key organizations and partners to make sure that you stay on top of what’s happening in the industry. Be sure to start to establish your following base of other key Company Pages right away. There are sure to be many engagement opportunities out there that can help to expand your reach and exposure.

Brian MatsonSenior Director of Strategy and Education

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PINTEREST IS PRO-SUSTAINABILITY

We learned last month, that Pinterest may, in fact, be good for you but now they might be encouraging contributions to sustainability practices. Pinterest may be ruling the social media game right now. Climate change has been at the forefront of concerns over a couple of decades and has continued to become an issue that more and more people are paying attention to all the time. Pinterest is recognizing this and is helping businesses bring environmental information to their ads.

Due to a recent study conducted by Pinterest, 94% of sustainable campaigns lifted pin awareness compared to 84% of non-sustainable campaigns. It was also found that Pinterest users are 63% more likely to say that knowing a product or company is environmentally friendly is a driver for purchases. But people are smart and can see through a company just trying to jump on the trend. So, it is important to communicate clear eco-friendly behavior.

Now, how does this relate to ads and travel? Businesses within a destination including restaurants, gift shops and hotels all have an opportunity to become more sustainable and this in turn can really help boost a campaign. Last fall, I ran a sustainability campaign for one of our clients who was focused on keeping their trails and campsites clean, wildlife safe and bring awareness for protecting the beautiful environment. This campaign could have benefited from these new sustainability audiences Pinterest is providing. Not only is this something we expect to see more of in the future but now we have more tools to make a successful campaign. Maybe we will be able to do two things at once, promote a beautiful destination and bring awareness to the importance of protecting our environment.

Ashley MaddixDigital Advertising Strategist

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DID YOU EXPORT YOUR UNIVERSAL ANALYTICS DATA

Only Guaranteed to be Available for 6 Months

A little known consequence of Google sunsetting Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023 is that they only guarantee that you’ll be able to access this data until the end of 2023. Google writes:

“After July 1, 2023, you’ll be able to access your previously processed data in your Universal Analytics property for at least six months. We know your data is important to you, and we strongly encourage you to export your historical reports during this time.”

Time to Panic & Export EVERYTHING?

No, please do not panic and try to export everything from UA. It’s impossible; there’s an infinite number of reports. The most important thing is exporting data that you truly can and truly will use. If you’ve never used a Source / Medium report with a Secondary Dimension of Metro before, then you probably don’t need to export that report from 2017. But, if you report year-over-year session numbers each year, then export your Audience -> Overview report for each year.

How You Can Use Exports

The most important thing to keep in mind: you cannot import UA data into GA4. Whatever you export, you’ll have to just reference yourself and use it in programs like Excel or Google’s Looker Studio to analyze, sort, and make charts. It’ll be very manual. Don’t give yourself a ton of work.

What Should You Export from Universal Analytics

There are no hard and fast rules. Cover the basics that you’ll use, in time frames that can be useful. We recommend just exporting a report for each year. Here are some ideas:

Audience -> Overview
Audience -> Geo -> Location
1. United States -> Metro
Acquisition -> All Traffic -> Source/Medium
Acquisition -> Campaigns -> All Campaigns
Behavior -> Site Content -> All Pages
Behavior -> Site Content -> Landing Pages
Behavior -> Site Search -> Search Terms
1. Full time range (e.g. 2014-2022)

If you want to go above and beyond, you could add secondary dimensions. This will allow you to get more granular insights, but be warned, this is harder to parse. For instance, “Default Channel Grouping” could be added to your “Metro” report or “Landing Page” could be added to your “All Campaigns” report.

Note: be sure to set your rows to the maximum. This is at the bottom of charts and typically 5,000.

If You Need More Guidance

Set up a coaching call with me (Nick) or another member of the TwoSix Digital team! We’re happy to help.

Contacts us to schedule a coaching call.

Nick DanowskiLead Content Strategist

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WANT PEOPLE TO SEE YOUR TWEET? THAT’LL BE $8/MONTH

Elon Musk announced Monday that starting April 15^th, only verified accounts – those that pay $8-11 a month for the blue checkmark – will appear in user’s For You Feed (the front page on the app). According to Musk, this was a necessary change to combat the amount of bot activity on the network.

If you’ve had experience running a Facebook page in the last five years, you know that boosted (paid) posts are one of the best ways to appear in the main feed. This move by Twitter is a more in-your-face-way of requiring payment for organic reach than what we see on Facebook, but the similarities are hard to ignore – especially if your business relies on social media to connect with your customers.

It will be very interesting to see how this move by Twitter will be received. If users embrace the change, it’s very possible that we could see similar moves from other social media sites. This doesn’t mean the days of organic social media are coming to an end – yet -but it will be more important than ever for businesses and social media managers to monitor and track the impact of paid and free organic posts in order to keep engagement levels up.

Scout DelicatoDigital Advertising Strategist

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TIKTOK INTRODUCES KEYWORD INSIGHTS

TikTok recently introduced a new research tool in its Creative Center called Keyword Insights. This new feature allows you to discover which keywords and phrases are performing well on TikTok ads. Even in a video-dominated app, text still makes a huge difference with in-video text, captions, as well as spoken word/closed captions. As TikTok explained:

“Sometimes the biggest obstacle to making meaningful creative is finding the right words to use. Our new Keyword Insights tool helps you discover the top keywords that resonate with your audience and industry. Browse keywords that have appeared in real, successful ad campaigns. Then watch the ads themselves for ideas about how to incorporate those keywords into your script, ad text and overlays.”

With the help of Keyword Insights, you can search for the most used terms in TikTok ads as well as see the details of how the term was used in the ads. To provide full context, this feature also allows you to view examples of TikTok ads that include the specified term. By using this tool to research the most recent trending keywords on TikTok ads, you can learn what is working in ads to better appeal to your audience. As I mentioned in last month’s On Our Radar, the most important rule for TikTok ad success is making your video not feel like an ad. By using Keyword research, you can see what terminology TikTok viewers are responding well to, in order to make your creative feel more natural in the viewer’s feeds. Remember, while taking advantage of this new feature, continue using eye-catching visuals to differentiate your ad while still aligning with the presentation style of TikTok.

Check out the new Keyword Insights tool here.

Makenna SchmitzDigital & Social Media Director

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With the ever-changing digital marketing world, we are here to keep you informed of new digital trends and what we are keeping on our radar for April 2023. Have any questions? Contact us! We’re here to help.

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