This Month in the world of marketing
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[00:00:00] Hi everyone. I'm Pip from Seymour Digital Media. You're listening to Know How Marketing Lab Podcast. This podcast brings together different experts in marketing from our Facebook group, cyberpunk Geeks, marketing Mixer. Each week we get on here and we talk about something, search marketing like Google Ads or SEO, social Media Marketing, from Facebook to TikTok or website marketing if you're a marketer or.
business owner or entrepreneur, this podcast for you. We're going to share the best SEO search, social, uh, and website strategies. We share tips and hacks, Google ads strategies, what's going on in the current market. Each week we discuss something exciting and awesome in marketing.
It's this month in the world of marketing and we have a lot to get through. So we're just going to dive right in. I'm [00:01:00] Pip Seymour, digital media. I'm Phelan also at Seymour digital media. I'm Rena at little work, Cindy media. And I'm Greg McKinnon with original 72 creative. Yeah, you got a creative name.
It's true. So what are we going to dive into first y'all? What's my most exciting is the AI stuff, but maybe that should go last. Reno, what's your stuff? Yeah. So today is this month in the world of marketing, where we do our recap and we're going to jump into social. We've got a few things going on Instagram posting.
You can do the carousel and Instagram posts having our I wasn't expecting to go first, clearly. Yeah. So that content. That content is being privileged. So the reach is greater with carousel posts at this time. So that might be a strategy or tactic that you want to implement in a carousel post.
, believe you can, I believe you can. Okay. I haven't done it myself. But I [00:02:00] believe that is possible. So if you want to have more reach on Facebook or Instagram, or is it, I believe it's Instagram. It doesn't say anything about Facebook. I don't know why they're still so separated, but anyways, it's funny that people still don't know that they're owned by the same company.
They're like, I hate, I won't be on Facebook. I'm like, but you're on Instagram. Yeah. And the one thing that I noticed about my my metrics recently is that real still do give you more new people in front of you. And so that's still a really good thing. That's just from my own experience. It's, I have got no hard data to back that up.
You can tell me in the comments what you are getting better results for with new viewers or more reach. And it really depends like what you're going for. So you might not want more reach. You might want more viewers. So it's hard to tell LinkedIn live events and other ad formats. So they're hope they're hoping to tap into your ad budget.
So they've started a whole bunch of new [00:03:00] ads. So you're, you have live event ads. That's what I'm trying to get at. So you can try that out. So it seems like they're moving a little bit away from being a job. Searching platform to catering more to different kinds of business activities, including their lives.
And yeah, and they have more targeting options. That's the other part. It's always been a bit limited, quite frankly, in my opinion. You can tell me what your LinkedIn ads are doing, but I find it pretty, pretty a little bit on the expensive side and a little bit limited in what it can do, but they're starting to really turn that around.
I've still had really good campaigns on LinkedIn though. I don't want To sound like yeah, display or cause you can do search ads on LinkedIn, you can do display ads. You can, yeah. Yeah. So we did display ads and we were sending traffic to a campaign on a website. They got, it was quite a bit of good traffic and we were able to, [00:04:00] in this case, we wanted to actually.
Do the targeting by job title. So that works really well on LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn't have quite so many interest based things on their targeting. Last time I checked, but it has been a good six months since I've been on there. So it could have changed since then too. But yeah, so that's really what I've got on social for right now.
I also heard that They took away comments on ads. Oh, yeah, you were mentioning that and I forgot to go and take a look so I cannot confirm or deny that one Yet at least not yet Yeah, I feel like you would have to distinguish like what type what is this an ad that has like a post an existing post that they're there's a bunch of variables within Facebook ads that you'd have to take a look at before determining that they've like completely removed it, or if there's like a specific set of circumstances in which they've removed it.
Yeah. Oh, I got to look at that. But the [00:05:00] other thing I wanted to mention that I almost forgot about was Tik Tok and Tik Tok notes. I don't know if you're familiar with Tik Tok notes, but it is it's not right in Tik Tok. It's like a totally different app. But you can access it through Tik Tok and you get a ton of.
Yeah. So it's a separated app. They're trying to do but everybody does steal everybody's idea and it's for photos. It's like they're trying to do an Instagram thing where they do the videos and photos. So photos are on Tik TOK notes. And it seems that people are using it in a very particular way where they put up a photo and then they have a lot of overlay texts on their photo.
That seems to be a Big, yeah, it seems to be what's happening a lot on notes and TikTok is really pushing people to use notes. So the algorithm is very good. The one thing that you need to remember though, with this is that notes is not available in the U S for some reason that launched in Canada and some other places, New Zealand, and [00:06:00] I'm not sure about Europe.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not, yeah, I'm not really sure why they decided on those particular regions. Usually things always start in the States or it feels like it when you're a Canadian, it sure feels like it, but in this case, it's not the case. So if you want to get up on there and build yourself up there before they launch it in the U.
S. Then this might be a really good opportunity. I'm going to start playing with it for some of my clients because it's really, I've noticed it's really taking off. And if it's not, what TikTok is doing is they continually send you notifications about notes on your TikTok and it's a ton of notifications.
Have you noticed that too, Pip? Yeah. I just ignore the notifications now because I'm like, wow, there's so many. I know. Wish they wouldn't do that, but it's, it makes it hard to find, the notifications you're really looking for. You're on TikTok, aren't you? You peruse I go on TikTok.
Yes. Oh, we know, we all go on TikTok. We know. Yeah. I saw both of you on [00:07:00] TikTok. Yeah. I do things about chicken, so it is not for business for me. And I'm, I have a business account now. But I'm just trying some things, testing some things out. Cause it's video is really fun, like to edit it.
It can be really fun. Yeah. It's really fun to, to work with. It is time consuming and a bit arduous at times too, right? These lives are the only video I do. We spend a lot of time cutting up video now. What, okay. So that's search. So search is the, a lot is happening in search. That was social. So for search there is so for search, one of the, or actually I'll do Google ads.
There's been a lot of big changes that just came out with Google ads. And actually, tangential to that because I'm thinking of it within the context, sorry, I have a cat losing his mind right next to me. Which one? Thor. He's running around the room madly and running up walls. Anyway So tangential to paid ads and SEO.
One of the big ones for e commerce that just came out as Google revamped [00:08:00] entirely how your store is interacting with your merchant center. So they have a new tab in your merchant center next, which is the new merchant center they've rolled out for everyone. So big thing that happened with that is that there's a tab in there called store quality.
As it gets difficult to fight over specific products, now you can actually move the lever of like your store itself. And it is related to when a kind of a longstanding program, but I think it's widely underused and underutilized is customer review. So it's very similar to your Google business profile reviews.
And so as you buy products and you get them through the shopping tab, Google can then outreach does outreach to the person, and then you can display their reviews that Google's acquired for you about your store on your store with a little bit of JavaScript. I think a lot of people realize that if you hate Amazon or you have a beef with them or something, you can shop on Google shopping and just click a tab and you got.
You pretty good. Shopping well and takes and Google. I feel like [00:09:00] Google shopping is for me, and I don't know if this is just an algorithm thing that I've tripped because I did make a purchase on Temu not that long ago, but now all of the Google shopping is always temu and I just don't want that for me.
Interesting. There's a lot. Timu does they're up to, it was in April that they dropped like 4 billion in ad spend. So they're like, if you engage with anything Timu related, you will be served a Timu ad, and you will personally be. Oh, I know, it just makes me crazy. But the, and then the shopping ads actually run out quite quickly.
That's what I found. I was looking for what was I looking for recently? Kettles. I couldn't, it was just all, nothing but Timo and then nothing else. And then and I had the same I actually have tried to use Google shopping and then I always end up on Amazon because they seem to serve me up more of what I'm looking for.
Which bums me out because I'd [00:10:00] really, I don't know how I found myself there. I was very much against, It was because I got prime accidentally. Yeah, it's hard. It is hard not to go there. Especially if you're not finding what you need Yeah as a canadian, I feel like shipping prices really affect that How I shop online.
You're not the only one everybody. I know we've been spoiled by Amazon, right? They're getting into TV You know We should actually include Amazon in this because when I started in Google Ads They had a tiny percent of the TV market And now it's, it was like 7 percent and now it's 20 percent of the market.
I think they have. Yeah. And their ads must be quite reasonable because I actually saw one of my clients had done an ad. I built their website ages ago, like years ago. And so they I saw their clinic. Like just a regular clinic. [00:11:00] Yeah. On, on, yeah. On Amazon. And then I've noticed I've been looking at it and a lot of the companies that are advertising with video on Amazon are smaller companies.
They're not huge. And I feel like they must have some kind of really great ad spend ad promotion or something going on. We've done ads on there. It's. It's very limited, but we have a client that, that actually tried to get him to realize that Google ads will be very different because he's I turned it on and it was like turning on a faucet and we're like, okay, and you don't have, there's not much you can put in there.
I, yeah, it's at the whims of that algorithm and I don't really know what that means. What do you mean? There's not much you can put in there. What does that mean? So it's a lot of very, yeah, so Amazon ads are pretty limited on, it's very similar to very similar vibes to when I use LinkedIn ads, the amount of targeting that you can do [00:12:00] is much less than you would expect, or have Facebook.
Okay. So I think what I'm talking about is commercials. So these people have commercials. Yeah. In between the shows, like the TV shows. Yeah. So it's done. And you're talking about ads that are throughout the Amazon. Amazon, yeah. So I wonder how connected or how you would connect it, like when you do Amazon ads.
Are you able to pick ads in prime, so yeah, it's something to research. I've never seen ads in prime. I've only ever seen commercials. Yeah, but that's what I'm trying to get at. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. But yeah, I think the commercials are become the ads, right? Because it's very similar to, so there, there's concentric circles of ad networks and one of those is like commercials.
And now that it's become digitized and it becomes part of Google and Amazon's network, they, the Google ads. Now you can target. Your commercial. So I can [00:13:00] make a 15 second, 30 second video and have that only go on to Google Google, just like TVs through the display network. It is interesting because none of these, none of the ads that I've looked at look unprofessional though, do you know what I mean?
I would expect if that was the case, if you could just choose that media format to put your ad placement. Ad placement is what I guess I'm getting at. I would expect to see some pretty low quality stuff. And I have it. They're all high production value videos. So I think it might be different.
Yeah. It is easier to do higher production videos now with all the AI stuff. So it could be. Yeah. But still, you go onto YouTube and you see some pretty bad videos on there that are ads. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I also wonder about, like I said to fail in. Because we have Prime and there are a lot of ads for gambling.
And I was like, is this oh, I've never seen any gambling [00:14:00] ads. Oh, I see. Oh, interesting. some rules had changed last year about gambling ads. And so now there're allowed, so we're gonna see them more and more I think. So interesting. Yeah the gambling ads aren't really targeted at us currently.
The because we are not the right age that they want to target. So most of the gambling ads are actually focused on universities, specifically in the United States. Sponsorship of universities has by gambling institutions is like that is the saddest thing I've ever heard. I don't I wasn't saying I'm happy about it.
I'm very much unhappy about that. But yeah, there's so so yeah, that's one of the big ones right now is that they've universities have been like stake, which is a gambling, a big crypto gambling website. It's I think Louisiana and one in Alabama, two of their universities are sponsored by them.
It's like very bleak very not a good way to do things, but yeah, that's what they're doing right [00:15:00] now. I wonder if many people know that the ideal in marketing and most professional spaces 18 to 24 and, or to 34 is the ideal customer market like that they want, right? They just want those people because they have the most disposable income, supposedly.
I don't know. I think my parents are like people around like retirement have the most disposable income until they're retired. When you're retired, you have fixed income. Anyway. Depending. The most the greatest wealth is still Baby Boomer Silent Generation. Really?
Yeah. Undoubtedly. There, there's a reason why only 10 percent of millennials own a house. Where 60 percent of Baby Boomers and 60% 60 percent of Silent Generation own a house. Interesting. Yeah, it's interesting that's the market that they want to hit all the time then, right?
It's cause they want a lifetime a lifetime customer. I'm trying to frame this in a nice way. And I'm just like they want lifetime value of a client. [00:16:00] Yeah. Customer. Yeah. And okay. So we've done search, a little bit of search. We've done a bit of social. Greg, we got some website stuff going on.
Yeah. Just a couple items of note WordPress 6. 7 is in Release Candidate 1 right now. The new version will, is scheduled for release in November on the 12th, I believe. New features coming out in this release. There's one that I'm interested in, which I think a lot of people will like is when you're editing your page in WordPress using the block editor you only see the blocks or what's in your.
your view in your screen, this new release is going to have a zoom out feature where it zooms out the page. So you see more context of the page layout in this zoom out view. So that you can [00:17:00] see all of, more of the page and how it's laid out and things like that, and then go back into the normal view to continue editing.
So that'll be interesting. A second option or a second feature that's pretty minor, but one that should be good for usability is persistent panels. And that means if you're in WordPress all the time building often when you go into add a block or do something, you can open up a panel and then choose the block you want to use and drag it on your page.
And then the panel will go away. So persistent panels basically will mean any panel you open. Will stay open until you decide to close it. They won't automatically close. And then you have to open them again after you've done something. So usability kind of thing. What happened with that fight?
Are they still fighting? Yeah, there's [00:18:00] still lawsuits pending or being filed. I think last I heard WP Engine filed to get access back to the wordpress. org repository. So they could continue getting updates of plugins and themes for their customers. There was also something that happened just recently with Flywheel.
And I believe people thought they lost access like WP Engine did, but I believe they just had an issue. Connecting because they've fixed whatever the issue was. And anyone with Flywheel is now able to continue updating. So I don't think they were a host that was also cut off like Matt Mullenweg cut off WP Engine.
Yeah we have a couple of clients on Flywheel and I have not noticed any disruptions. But I do know that they're owned by WP Engine. [00:19:00] But I think that they're technically a separate entity, so they don't fall within like the issues that WP Engine are having with them. Oh, I also, I learned something very valuable about websites this last week, actually, that I wanted to mention for SEO, which is really interesting.
When you see most websites or you put them through a test, like page speed insights and most websites like fail, dramatically actually especially on mobile. We learned that there are some plugins that can like lickety split Fix it and like to where it's epic, awesome.
Like I've never had a faster site speed in my life, but it's only for WordPress because of the plugins. So like Squarespace, you actually have to manually do minifying CSS or minify, I don't even know really what that means because I think it's JavaScript. Are they, do they allow you to go in and minify those kinds of things?
Because aren't those things within the proprietary [00:20:00] space? It's not. Content, you can. You have to activate developer mode. You need someone who knows what they're doing with it. So what you would do is you go into the files and then you would manually. Run it through a minification program.
So there's like websites that will minify it for you. And WP rocket was a plugin that we were using that. Yes. We use that a lot too. Yeah. Yeah. And if you activate everything in it, it does more than a web three total cash, which was, used to be my favorite. And then Yeah. And if anyone wants a cheaper version, I've got the agency license.
Oh yeah. I think we got that too. Do we have that? Yeah. Not yet, but we're planning on it. Maybe we'll just talk to you. Yeah. Talk to Reena. Yeah. We do sometimes recommend clients get it on their own. WP Rocket. Yeah, that's right. It's a rock star. I use Hummingbird on some of the sites that I managed.[00:21:00]
Really? I've never heard of Hummingbird. I love the names. My favorite. So we have for web builders that are going to go away, I guess one day or change dramatically, but. The muffin builder, if we can name a few that's to my heart, that makes me giggle. It's like, why don't we just get cookie crumble and the beaver builder is a good one. I think that's pretty funny. I don't know. It's Canadian beaver, anyway. Okay. Can we jump into AI and go back and forth and what AI is because it's rock star. No, I don't know. Everything, or, like I'm new to some of the AI scene, like I don't use Claude, which I know most people use Claude a lot and there's something called Notebook, or AI, that took off last week, I think it, it does some voice, it can turn your voice into a podcast or something, I don't know, it went viral last week, it is called let me just check my notes, because I had the name.
[00:22:00] And I don't, it's just so cool. Notebook LM. Sorry. Notebook LM. I don't know if you guys have checked it out, but it went viral last week somehow. Claude's had some big breakthroughs. Flux AI is the place where people are doing images. And there's Huge breakthroughs every week. It's so hard to keep up with this stuff.
That I can't, I'm just learning how to use it all. And it's, I find it fascinating. There's so much going on in that space. That it's pretty overwhelming. I actually said to this guy, that's all in the AI space. Like, how do you even keep up? Because every day like Gemini's in there, Gemini is now inside your Google ads.
It's in your email. I don't know if you've seen it, but Rena, do you have it in? Yeah. It's constantly prompting me. And it's helpful. Do you find it helpful? No. I haven't used it yet. I am I do use ai. I have a system of how I like to use it, and that's pretty [00:23:00] much it. It is so hard to keep up with Ora saying.
Yeah, for sure it is. It's really fun. But yes I'm going through the API stuff with the AI stuff it gives you more options with the, images and stuff, but I need to learn what notebook LM is. And I don't know who uses Claude here, or I use perplexity a lot, which I love. And that's and then there's even this site yesterday, it's called bread, something, and it's a open source AI that's compatible to Claude and Gemini and a secret of the day.
If anybody wants to know if you take an image and put it in Gemini and say, write me an alt description, it is the best at writing alt descriptions for your images. No, you're kidding. Okay. No, it's so good. Really? Yeah. It's so good. You can tell the key. You say the keyword too, that you want to be put in.
I have a prompt you can use, but it's so good. Like [00:24:00] it's so good at it. Okay, when is this done so I can get off and start looking at stuff? Okay, Aura is saying, Notebook LM is great for fetching a bunch of complex text based content on a topic and then have it split out into audio interview style podcasts.
Oh, I see. Oh, interesting. That's why it went viral. All right. And no, you can't get off for three minutes.
Also, YouTube Shorts just got extended from one minute to three minutes. Oh, how did I miss that? Okay, cool. It's at the start of this month. Maybe longer. I don't. Because it's usually, it's really annoying to edit a video down to one minute or sub one minute. Yeah. I thought, until Reena corrected me, that I had to do reels in 26 seconds.
Okay. Cool. They have to be 26 seconds. I don't know. It's marketing is changing really fast, especially with the AI stuff. I think we're going to be able to do a lot more, but I also think that humans will have to wield it. Like I don't see getting [00:25:00] around having to review it's like an assistant, right?
It's like a helpful assistant. It's also just a the. Be the person that's like critical of the VC world. A lot of the stuff that's making it really hard to keep up with is going to, the money is going to dry up and they say, Eight to 12 months. So a lot of this AI stuff is good. So then here's the thing.
You're going to build your entire business on this AI, and then all the prices are going to go way up, just Netflix. There are already a challenge or a you're asking about Gemini. So just type in Gemini in, and it's. It's Google's AI. Yeah, there, that will be a depressing day, Reena.
It's already getting more and more expensive because I pay for perplexity. I pay for chat. I know. I know. Gemini, we pay for, yeah, Gemini is Google's AI. So eventually it doesn't actually replace a person because it costs just as much. Do you know what I'm [00:26:00] saying? Like it's, yeah, what does get slightly replaced and weird.
If you go into perplexity and you say, make me an image of Maple Bay, it will grab images of Maple Bay. And then you can say, and it'll say, generate image. And that's flux attached to perplexity. And It'll make you an image. And then you see that it's pulling ideas from all these other sites.
So like what happens to all that? So let's just clarify that. I feel like I really need to clarify that it's pulling, it's not pulling ideas. It's pulling actual visuals from other people's. Copyrighted work. And that's the, that's the issue. That's the issue. So it's it's one thing if you're creating meta tags or sorry, alt text or something like that's actually, not copyrighted material.
I have no problem with any of that, but we have a whole creative. The sector [00:27:00] that's underpaid already. And and here I'm going to go on my soapbox, and largely got us through the pandemic through free things. And then we don't ever want to pay these people ever.
And then now we're saying that their stuff is not copyrightable anymore. It doesn't, I am not saying any of that. And with that, I know, but that's what AI does essentially. Yeah, it's a it's what its purpose is it's not like that, it's not a tangential, this is a side outcome, that was the outcome of what they wanted it's an obfuscation machine, it's designed to hide.
Hold on, do we think like Getty really, we don't have, Much control over what happens. We get to be onlookers a little bit. So I'm wondering, Will, do you think I stock and Getty photos will all be seriously affected by this? Don't know. I'm expecting so. Considering one of those is named after a guy from the late 1800s and it's still around today and the family still has a ton of money.
Yeah. [00:28:00] I think there'll be the, they have deep pockets and there's one There's a little mouse that's very well protected, that is very interested in making sure his copyright is protected. Oh, and with that, it's the end of our podcast. We will see you all next week. That was really funny. And. Thank you for smiling with me.
Phelan and I have jokes about Mickey Mouse around here all the time. We next week what is happening? Oh yes. It's a five week month. So usually, the, this is the fourth week that happens in a month, the marketing this month in the world of marketing. And so we have a fifth week. Week topic, which is best practices for creating engaging short videos.
Oh, that's not true. I booted Reena. She's doing me a solid favor and we're going to be doing an interview with someone next week. So make sure to join us. It's going to be really great. It's going to be a surprise. All right. We'll see you next week.
