The TwoSix team is back and ready to share what’s On Our Radar for September so that you can stay ahead of the always-evolving digital marketing landscape. This month the TwoSix team discusses a new guide to Reels, Snapchat Legal Issues, TikTok Custom AI Voice Generation, and more! Keep reading to find out what we’re keeping On Our Radar for September 2024.
Meta’s Reels now get more than 200 billion views daily across Instagram and Facebook, and they are vital to building engagement throughout the platform. Short-form video has become the most popular form of content consumption, and Meta has recently released The Performance Playbook, a guide to improving your Reels.
The guide is a great handbook for anyone looking to make better Reels that truly connect with viewers. It covers simple but powerful tips like using the right video format, adding sound, and showing real people to make your Reels more engaging. By following these tips, you can create Reels that are entertaining, digestible, and relatable – all leading to a greater level of engagement on Facebook and Instagram.
Adding your native Reels to a strong paid campaign strategy that leverages its Advantage + placements has resulted in a 13% higher return on ad spend and an 11% higher reach across Reels, Feed, and Stories.
Click below to check out the Perfect Playbook now to improve your Reel creation!
Adding a human voice to TikTok videos (or any vertical video) can produce incredible results. You can instantly humanize your videos and take things a step further than simply using a trending sound or generic music clip. The human voice adds so much context to your videos. TikTok has had the option to include automated voices for quite some time. Unfortunately, most of the in-app voices tend to be pretty generic, overly used by others, and quite off-putting in most cases.
You could just record your own voiceovers in real-time, but recording flawless voiceovers can be a real challenge and time suck. So how can we have a unique voice and save time?
Just like everything else, AI is changing the game a bit with voice cloning. There are quite a few services out there like Speechify that offer voice clones, but good ones typically cost some money and are only available off-platform from whatever network we’re using. That can make things kind of cumbersome when it comes to content development. Similarly, CapCut offers a similar tool, but again, it’s off-platform. TikTok may be on the road to streamlining the whole voice clone process with their new option under their voiceover options. You can now create your own AI voice clone voice!
You’ll want to watch for this feature in your app. It’s currently rolling out to users. Personally, I am excited about this new tool, but I do hope that they add the option to copy and paste blocks of text that isn’t on the screen in the video. Imagine being able to copy portions of blog posts to use as the narration track in your videos! The possibilities would be endless! It’s just a matter of time.
New tools always come with some concerns. One thing to be mindful of is the terms of service. It’s a bit unclear as to whether or not your voice clone could be used by others. If so, that would open up a whole can of worms. At the end of the day, our voiceprints are already quite readily available in the wild as it is. So does it really matter at this point? I am on the fence.
Will you give the new TikTok AI voice clone a shot? Let us know!
If you’re doing marketing for any kind of organization, there are probably have a few areas or cities that you’d like to tap into. We hear it all the time: “We see a lot of visitors from South Bend, but we’d love to get more from Indianapolis” or “Every time someone from Green Bay visits, they have no idea about x, y, or z”. Concept-wise, it’s remarkably easy to capture relevant organic searches on search engines like Google and Bing. It does take a bit of effort, of course.
The general idea is to create content on your website for a location. For example, we recently completed a SEO Analysis & Optimization Program for Ludington. In their Search Console, we see a fair number of searches for “ludington to chicago” — even though they don’t even have any relevant pages for this search. Of course, with a “Chicago to Ludington” itinerary blog, they harness the searches and ensure that users see relevant, informative, and convincing content.
Another angle is to get into the conversation for places “on the way” to your target geo, making your destination a place to stop. Sticking with Ludington, when we look up popular searches including the word “chicago to”, we see that “chicago to detroit” has an estimated 5,900 searches monthly. Including a phrase like “Whether you’re headed from Chicago to Detroit or making Ludington your final destination…” could get you into the mix.
Thinking strategically with your content is crucial. This type of approach is also a great way to future-proof your relevancy when it comes to AI, ensuring that it pulls from your website and accurate information is available to users.
As advertisers, we’re always on the lookout for new ways to connect with audiences, but Snapchat’s latest ad placements come with a glaring red flag. New Mexico has recently filed a lawsuit against the platform, accusing it of creating an environment that promotes harmful behavior to minors. The timing is interesting, to say the least—Snapchat rolls out new opportunities for ad space just as its practices face serious legal scrutiny.
This is a clear signal to marketers: we need to be cautious about where we’re putting our dollars. The lawsuit highlights a broader issue about the responsibility advertisers have in terms of where our messages appear and what content they’re adjacent to. Snapchat’s shiny new placements might look tempting, but aligning your brand with a platform currently under fire for exposing minors to risky behaviors could backfire.
We’ve seen this play out before, with brands pulling back from platforms like X (formerly Twitter) due to content concerns. As the digital advertising landscape continues to evolve, so should our approach. It’s not just about ROI—it’s about making smart, ethical choices about where we invest, ensuring we aren’t indirectly contributing to harmful ecosystems. The moral here is clear: think twice before jumping onto new ad opportunities when the platform itself is on shaky ground.
We’re always looking for new ways to improve content and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has joined the conversation. His biggest tip is to repost your content in multiple formats, think Reels, Stories, Posts etc. Taking this a step further, posting content across platforms can extend your reach even further and potentially reach more audiences.
Reels seem to be prioritized on Instagram and Facebook, so leaning into video is a great idea as well and posting these in multiple formats across platforms also is good practice. Making good organic content can easily be used for paid content as well. There’s no shortage of opportunity when you focus on creating and posting good, quality content.
He also says that collaborator posts can help boost reach. As a CVB, collaborating with local businesses can provide a boost to that business and possibly vice versa.
We love to see people creating and sharing great content to showcase their destination. Keep up the good work!
Subject lines are arguably the most important part of your email newsletters for the obvious reason:
If people don’t open your message… they don’t see it.
While there’s a debate over whether click rate or open rate should be prioritized, we know one thing, everyone who clicked on a link had first read the subject line and opened the message.
So, how do you make a good subject line?
While there’s many marketers who swear by a certain amount of emojis or words in a subject line in order for them to be successful, the answer isn’t always that simple. Using a formula of exactly 8 words, with one emoji, adding personalization, keep it short, but be descriptive is going to put you in a box. While each of those tips are good on their own, sometimes these “best practices” will hold you back. In reality, there are endless variations of subject lines that will work for your destination, the key is to try new things, see what works, and creatively lean into that.
Constant Contact has provided some ideas of different subject line types to try out on your audience and see what clicks:
- Be witty! Use humor to draw your audience in.
- Cold email subject lines- Get straight to the point.
- Intrigue your audience with interesting news.
- FOMO subject lines. Use phrases like “Hurry” or “Don’t Miss Out” to give readers a sense of urgency.
Click below to browse more of the subject line ideas from Constant Contact.
Last month, the announcement of SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine prototype was on our radar. That proposed the question: Could the rise of AI-generated search engines impact the Search Engine Market share, and antitrust lawsuits against Google for monopolizing the search and text advertising market?
Well, answers regarding Google surfaced soon-after in the beginning of August, when Google lost their first antitrust case against the U.S. Department of Justice.
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” US District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in his ruling. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
Depending on what penalties the Judge ends up ruling could greatly impact search and search marketing for advertisers. Google said they plan to appeal the ruling, so it could still be a long while before we know the true outcome.
How Could this Impact Advertisers?
A Fighting Chance for Competitors
The ruling comes at a good moment for competitors as consumers are already getting used to relying on other sources to discover what they are searching for. For example, depending on what you need, you may head straight to Amazon to search for a new portable charger before your weekend getaway, browse TikTok for travel ideas, or the best restaurants to try in a city you are visiting, head to Reddit for tech troubleshooting advice, or turn to ChatGPT for help with planning the best places to stop along your road trip.
These are other platforms that users commonly treat like a search engine and something digital advertisers could be exploring as channels for engagement.
Combine that with emerging types of AI-powered search, and it’s easy to see how emerging search trends and platforms could pose a real threat to Google’s dominance.
More Competitive Advertising Prices
An overwhelming majority of market share gives Google the ability to charge what it wants for search advertising. Rumors of forcing Google to sell off Chrome and removing Chrome as a default search engine for devices could open the playing field for other search engines to gain more share and offer more competitive advertising costs.
Fragmented Data Flow
Lawsuit penalties against Google have the potential to diversify current search engine usage. Rather than relying on Google as our primary source of data, we may experience disruption as the flow of data about users, their interests, and behaviors becomes fragmented and split across different channels.
Next Up in the Google Lawsuit Marathon: DOJ vs. Google’s Adtech
On Monday, September 9, Google and the U.S. Department of Justice will began their second trial of the year. The DOJ seeks to eliminate Google’s ad businesses, and force them to sell off Google Ads Manager and AdX in order to put a stop to anticompetitive practices. While the proposed remedy could end the alleged monopoly, it could end up causing a lot of harm to publishers – so stay tuned!
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 September 2024. Have any questions? Contact us! We’re here to help.
Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to stay in the loop on all things TwoSix Digital.
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