Snapchat announced Friday it is launching Snap Select to give advertisers using the platform’s six-second non-skippable Commercial ads access to premium video inventory. Snap Select is scheduled to roll out later in the second quarter and will allow advertisers to reserve inventory via Snap’s Ads Manager at a fixed cost-per-impression.
Why we should care
Snap has been putting a lot of time and effort into building out Discover programming options, now offering more than 450 premium content channels worldwide from outlets like NBCUniversal, ESPN, BuzzFeed, Viacom, Discovery and Refinery29.
Over the last year, the time spent watching Shows on Snapchat (content produced by the company’s Discover partners) has more than tripled. Snap said nearly half of its daily Discover viewers watched content on the platform every day of the week last quarter.
With Snap Select, advertisers will now have access to the app’s top video content and the ability to reserve Commercials inventory to run at certain times at a fixed CMP within Ads Manager. Snap said it will also be releasing a list of Shows connected to the premium inventory where Commercial ads are eligible to run, making the program transparent to advertisers.
“Snap Select gives marketers and agencies access to reserve inventory in the most premium, popular shows on Snapchat, and a direct path to reach Millennial and Gen Z audiences that are increasingly difficult to reach elsewhere. We’re thrilled with our ability to deliver ROI with non-skippable, full-screen Commercials, with sound on and at scale,” said Snap VP of global agency partnerships David Roter.
A new “Proposals” feature will allow media to buyers review and approve their Snap Select plans using a “one-click” tool without having to login to Ads Manager.
More on the news
Snap reports that its ads now reach more 13 to 34-year-olds than Instagram in the U.S. and, per its latest earnings report, has more daily active users than Twitter (Snap reported 190 million global daily active users while Twitter reported 134 million global mDAUs (monetized daily active users).
Snap saw a 39% year-over-year increase in revenue for the first quarter of 2019, bringing in $320 million.
On Thursday, Snap announced it had hired its first CMO Kenny Mitchell, a former VP of marketing for McDonald’s.
About The Author
Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.
Contributor and SMX speaker, AJ Wilcox, explains in this video how a simple message and focused audience works best when advertising on LinkedIn.
Below is the video transcript:
All right advertisers. Here’s the strategic approach you need to have for LinkedIn ads in 2020.
Use the A-M-O strategy
I like to use the acronym AMO, A-M-O for understanding how to attack any sort of social advertising, but especially LinkedIn. So “A” is your audience. It’s who you’re targeting. “M” is the message. So how your prospects see the message. And then “O” is your offer. This is really what is in it for the user, and what you’re asking them to.
Choosing your LinkedIn audience
So your audience on LinkedIn, keep it tight. There’s no reason to target more people than who you’re really going after just because you’re trying to chase some arbitrary audience size.
I like to keep my audiences between about 20,000 and 80,000 but certainly, there’s no reason to make that broader if they’re not a good fit. So just go with whatever size audience and don’t listen to anyone who recommends otherwise.
Ad format and copy
The message really is what the user sees. So there’s the ad format, the image or video, and the ad copy.
For the ad copy, make sure your messaging is short, sweet and to the point. People on LinkedIn are busy.
Ad imagery on LinkedIn
For the imagery, make sure it’s bright and contrasts against LinkedIn’s blues, grays and whites color palette. Go heavy on the oranges, greens and reds.
Make your offer valuable
Always start with sponsored content if you can, bidding just cost per click. It’s the simplest, easiest to troubleshoot kind of ad formats and simplest to make. It’s really easy to predict. and so there’s a problem, you’ll be able to see it very quickly.
Bid cost per click because that’s by far the most efficient way, at least when you’re starting out.
The offer, “O” in AMO, is by far the most important part of LinkedIn Ads. No one wants to hop on the phone with your sales rep before they’ve ever heard about your company. So quit trying to push people right to a demo request. Instead, go for gated content first that truly is valuable. We’re talking a free checklist or cheat sheet or guide, ebook, webinar or free in-person event. Those are the types of things that do well here.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
AJ Wilcox is a long-time digital marketer who fell in love with the LinkedIn Ads platform back in 2011. Since then, he’s scaled and managed among the world’s most sophisticated accounts worldwide. In 2014, he founded B2Linked.com which specializes in LinkedIn Ads training, consulting, and account management, and recently became a Certified LinkedIn Ads Partner. He’s a ginger, triathlete, and his company car is a gokart. He lives in Utah with his wife and 4 kids.
Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.
A calendar plugin for your WordPress site is a great way to ensure everyone is on the same page. If your business revolves around events, monthly announcements, or appointments, then you’ll want to manage it all with an easy calendar layout.
You’ll be well on your way to being more organized, productive, and transparent with your customers once you find a calendar plugin that works well with your current workflow.
There are tons of calendar plugins out there, making it hard to know where to begin when picking the best one. Well, you’re in luck. Below I discuss some of the very best WordPress calendars you can start using today as well as how much it’ll cost you to use each one. Let’s dive in.
#1 – Timetable Responsive Schedule — The Best For Displaying Daily And Weekly Time Schedules
With Timetable, you can display an array of event calendars, schedules, and availability information all in one easy to use plugin. The name pretty much gives away what they’re best at, which is ensuring that your customers know your schedule down to the hour.
With it, you can generate PDFs you or your customers can print for convenience. The events widget lets your customers know when, where, how, and what time your next event will be held.
Thankfully, Timetable doesn’t confine you to creating time blocked schedules and events. It also offers booking functionality. So you can book and fill your events accordingly.
Once you’ve downloaded the plugin, you can add a new event to your calendar, name it, adjust its settings, event hours, and event frequency, set dates, and publish. Once you’ve published it, copy the autogenerated shortcode and paste it anywhere you want to display it on your site.
The best features of Timetable include:
Free lifetime updates so that your plugin will always be up to date and compatible with the latest WordPress updates
Fully responsive
Custom CSS option to modify it to match your brand look
Shortcode generator for display on any site page or blog post
Event filtering to easily search for specific event listings
Lots of customizable color options for events, days, event text, and more
Timetable Responsive Schedule is $29 for a regular license, which comes with future updates and six months of support. Get started with Timetable here.
#2 – The Events Calendar — The Best For Multiple Calendar Views
The Events Calendar will fit like a glove if you want access to multiple calendar views with plenty of powerful events and scheduling features that keep your community and customers engaged.
Once you download The Events Calendar plugin and add all your event information, you can view your calendar in several different views, including monthly, daily, weekly, and more.
Here’s a quick rundown of how you can view it:
Month View: Classic calendar view where you can see all events at a glance for the entire month
List View: Have your audience or prospective customers view your events in a chronological list that can be filtered by month
Day View: Have events happening on the same day? You can configure your calendar to display day views so you can easily see which events are happening at what time on the same day without any confusion.
Week View: See upcoming events for a week at a glance.
Photo View: Create a grid of chronological events displayed primarily as images.
Map View: If your events are location-dependent, a map view can be a helpful visual aid.
A wide array of calendar views is only one standout feature of The Events Calendar plugin. Some of the top features of Events Calendar are:
Easily manage in-person and virtual events
Export and import other calendar events with a built-in CSV importer
Mindful of time zones, so all your customers are on the same page no matter where in the world they are
Plenty of event category and tagging functionality
Build community with an event calendar designed to bring groups and organizations together
Multiple calendar views for accessibility and ease of use
The ability to highlight specific events to draw more attention to them
Easy set-and-forget recurring events once you define event parameters
Shortcode feature to embed and display any calendar, schedule, or event on any page or blog post
Compatible with Google Maps and Google Calendar
The base calendar plugin is entirely free forever and comes with the month, list, and day views, has categories and tags, and is fully responsive. The Pro version with additional features, support, calendar views, recurring events, and advanced fields is $99 for one site, $149 for three websites, and starts at $299 for 10 or more sites.
#3 – Simple Calendar — The Best For Use With Google Calendar
The perfect marriage between WordPress and Google Calendar is the Simple Calendar plugin. It’s no wonder it has been downloaded over one million times.
You can easily display your events, schedules, bookings, and availability with their straightforward calendar. As you might have guessed, there’s a reason why “simple” is in the name. Because it truly strives to be exactly that.
Simple Calendar lets you show monthly, weekly, or list views with the most important updates you can manage through Google Calendar. It also offers a widget view if you want to display your calendar in your site’s footer or sidebar.
If someone comes across your event and wants to add it to their own Google Calendar, Simple Calendar lets them do that with an “Add to GCal” link option. Because of Simple Calendar’s convenience and compatibility with Google Calendar, I recommend it as the best calendar plugin if you’re already using Google Calendar to manage your events. If you’re unsure about the plugin, you can always try their instant demo.
Some features of Simple Calendars include:
Fully mobile responsive
Color-code events to your taste
Manage events on Google Calendar and have them automatically displayed on your WordPress site
Integrates with Events Calendar Newsletter for sending event reminders
The pricing is straightforward and breaks down like this:
Personal — $49 for up to 1 site
Business — $79 for up to 5 sites
Agency — $149 for up to 25 sites
All plans come with one year of support and updates. Download and start using Simple Calendar today.
#4 – Events Schedule — The Best For Versatile Calendar Styles
Events Schedule is a solid WordPress calendar plugin in terms of versatility. They offer 12 customizable schedule styles, each with different features.
With list views, monthly views, and weekly views, you can ensure your audience has plenty of access and time to plan for future events. The advanced event filters also let your audience easily find the events they’re looking for without confusion or hassle.
Because of Events Schedule’s versatility and wide array of calendar types, it’s easily usable in just about any industry. You can use it to schedule fitness classes and events, publish theatre schedules, Museum timetables, arena events, or bar events, just to name a few.
Top features of Events Schedule:
Compatible with WooCommerce
Includes a booking system
Able to integrate with Google Maps
Easily schedule repetitive events
Countdown timer feature included
Intuitive visual schedule builder
SEO friendly code and display options optimized for speed
Shortcode generator option for simple plug and play
Custom call-to-action buttons feature
If you want to try Events Schedule before clicking the buy button, I recommend you take your time to look through their live demo, where you’ll get to see the look of each schedule, what industry it’s best for, and how to put it together and publish it on your WordPress site.
If you pair this plugin’s price point with the number of calendar options it offers, it makes for an impressive package worth diving into if you want to go beyond the basics of what a calendar plugin can do. A regular license costs $39 and includes six months of support and future updates.
#5 – EventON — The Best For Colorful And Dynamic Event Calendars
EventON is a powerful calendar plugin that stands out with dynamic and colorful calendar displays you can customize to your liking. As soon as you set eyes on any calendar created with the EventON plugin, it’s sure to be absolutely eye-catching.
With EventON, you can create colorful calendar bubbles that, when clicked, open up to display a calendar card with every event detail they need to know.
Event bubbles aren’t the only view available to you once you download their plugin. You can create tile calendar views with bigger calendar “tiles” that display each of your events with readily available details. Don’t worry, once you set up your calendar tiles, they’re designed to be fully responsive, so they’ll look good on any screen.
You can also display calendar events in a list view with thumbnails and add any number of event colors for each tile. Like other robust plugins, EventON isn’t a one-trick pony. There are plenty of useful features it offers to users, especially if you host lots of live events. Read on below to learn more about some of their very best features.
Some of the best features of EventOn are:
Generates shortcodes you can quickly grab and plug in with Gutenberg
Great for hosting virtual live events
Developer friendly for advanced feature altering capabilities
Expandable calendar details for each event
Add unlimited images to each event to better inform your audience
Has “add to Google Calendar” options for increased engagement
Easily filter and sort events with a few clicks
Add custom repeat events so you can set it and forget it
Easily change custom time formats to display according to your preferences
EventON costs $25 for a regular license, which includes future updates and six months of support. You can also get support extended to 12 months for an additional $7.50. Get started using EventOn’s colorful calendar features here.
What I Looked At To Find The Best WordPress Calendar Plugins
There are tons of calendar plugins available. But not all of them offer the same features, as some cater to different user needs better than others. Here are a few things I considered when researching the best WordPress calendar plugins and factors you should consider when deciding which is best for your business.
Visual Layout
To cover the basics, a solid WordPress calendar plugin is mobile responsive. It’ll always adjust to any screen it’s viewed on, no matter the size. They’re also easy on the eyes and accessible.
The last thing you want to do is use a calendar plugin that looks outdated, has limited functionality, or doesn’t play well with your website’s other plugins. The more you can create a visually appealing calendar easy for anyone to use, the more you’ll get out of it when using it as a business management tool.
Booking and Appointment Options
Some calendars are designed to be very simple so that you can display important dates and events. Others are created with bookings and appointments in mind.
This means you won’t only be able to display availability but that your customers can book appointments right on your calendar at any time. If you run a service-based business, this can be a great option to look into when choosing the right calendar plugin.
Simplicity
You want to find a plugin that falls in the sweet spot between simplicity and advanced features depending on your business needs. You don’t want to spend the money to buy a robust plugin with lots of heavier features if you won’t even use a third of them.
On the other hand, you don’t want to use a plugin that limits your capabilities when it comes to booking appointments, displaying dates, automating and marking holidays off, or even providing a useful legend.
Conclusion
A WordPress calendar plugin can prove useful in keeping your business productive, staying organized, and keeping your customers happy and informed.
Here’s a recap of the plugins I reviewed in this guide to help you make the best choice:
EventOn — The best for colorful and dynamic event calendars
Use this guide to choose the best WordPress calendar plugin according to your needs. Then come back and leave a comment below with any feedback on your favorite calendar features.
Account-based marketing tactics are set to account for a growing share of marketing budgets in 2020. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of marketers who are using account-based marketing (ABM) tactics plan to increase their ABM budgets in the coming year, according to a study by Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) and the ABM Leadership Alliance. On average, the ABM-practicing marketers said they dedicated 29% of their budgets to ABM in 2019.
The report, which surveyed 196 marketers from B2B technology and business services companies, found that 71% of the companies saw greater ROI within their ABM efforts compared to their traditional marketing initiatives.
Majority of companies still experimenting with ABM. Of the marketers surveyed, the largest share (43%), fit into ITSMA’s “experimenting” category, meaning they are beyond “exploring” ABM strategies and are now piloting, measuring and refining their approach. ITSMA’s ABM adoption model is made up of four levels: Exploring, Experimenting, Expanding and Embedded.
A total of 73% of the survey participants were either experimenting or expanding — with 30% categorized as “Expanding” or looking to increase account coverage via ABM. Seventeen percent were categorized as “Embedded,” the most evolved stage of ABM adoption (marketers who have evolved their ABM strategy to drive strategic growth for their business).
Most popular ABM tools: Email, website, CRM and social. More than 70% of the respondents said they rely on their website, email marketing, CRM and social to implement ABM campaigns. Most are using analytics, account insights and marketing automation.
Less than 30% are using tools like chat, data management platforms, content activation tools, CDPs or predictive analytics.
What the ABM all-stars are doing. When looking at the most effective ABM programs, the top marketers were more likely to be using analytics, account insights and engagement insights.
The report also found that the top-performing ABM marketers use two or three different ABM programs (either one-to-one, one-to-few or one-to-many). “More companies will try multiple types of ABM in a blended strategy to keep up with demand from their sales and account teams if they started with One-to-One ABM, or to increase their focus on their most important accounts if they started with One-to-Few ABM or One-to-Many ABM,” said Bev Burgess, the senior VP and ABM practice lead for ITSMA.
Of the survey respondents, 63% were currently practicing only one tactic — with the largest share (25%) focused on one-to-few ABM programs. Twenty-two percent were practicing at least two tactics, with the largest share in this group implementing both one-to-one and one-to-few programs.
What’s to come in ABM. More than half (51%) of the marketers surveyed said they plan to blend their ABM approach in the coming year by using more than one type of ABM — adding either one-to-one, one-to-few or one-to-many tactics to their existing program.
Sixty-four percent of marketers said they plan to increase their ABM staff in the coming year. As far as how much businesses plan to increase both their ABM budgets and staff, on average, marketers reported they plan to increase budgets by 21.3% and staff by 19.3%.
When asked where the budget increases will be spent, 21% said they plan on investing in their ABM platform and adding predictive capabilities to their ABM technology stack in the next 12 to 18 months. Only 13% planned to invest in account insights and 12% in engagement insights — even these technologies were most often used by companies with the most effective ABM programs.
Why we care. Of the marketers whose ABM programs were categorized as “Embedded” (those with the most elite ABM efforts per the ITSMA adoption model), 45% reported their ABM initiatives drove revenue growth. Seventy-five percent of the top performers saw significant improvements within their account relationships and 59% saw an improvement in brand reputation.
Burgess says ITSMA has witnessed a sharp rise in interest in account-based marketing for more than five years now, with no signs of it slowing down. Three-quarters of the top performers reported significant improvements within their account relationships, and 59% saw an improvement in brand reputation.
“ABM will continue to influence the way we do our broader marketing too, such as One-to-Few ABM principles shaping vertical marketing and One-to-Many ABM shaping ‘always on’ offering campaigns,” comments Burgess in the benchmark report.
About The Author
Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.
Amazon always takes the long view. Though it’s hard to imagine Amazon’s domination of e-commerce changing any time soon, the retailer has set its sights on also challenging the giants of brick-and-mortar including Walmart, Costco and Target.
To that end, Amazon is poised to implement a long-rumored change to force smaller vendors (less than $10M per year) to move from Vendor Central to Seller Central. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Amazon is planning a “large scale reduction” of small vendors in order to cut costs, increase automation, and prioritize its partnerships with major brands.
Though they have not yet announced an official policy to this effect, their actions speak louder than words. In March, Amazon unceremoniously paused its weekly replenishment orders for over ten thousand small vendors below the $10M per year mark. Shortly afterward, Amazon claimed that many of these interruptions were done in error. Most (but not all) of the vendors had their orders resumed, but with a catch – they were required to register with Amazon’s Brand Registry or, failing to register, move from Vendor to Seller Central.
If you’re among the tens of thousands being forced to make the change, you need to understand the implications of this change in order to properly adapt and prepare yourself for a smooth transition.
What is Seller Central?
Amazon is really two different marketplaces stacked on top of each other. The first party (1P) marketplace is where Amazon sells inventory directly, buying stock in bulk from 1P vendors and then pricing and selling those products to consumers. 1P suppliers use Vendor Central (VC) to control their product detail pages and manage purchase orders. In the third party (3P) marketplace, instead of selling wholesale to Amazon the merchant uses Amazon as a platform to sell directly to consumers and pays a commission. These sellers manage their product offerings using Seller Central (SC).
The 3P marketplace has grown more rapidly than 1P and now accounts for roughly two thirds of sales, leaving plenty of opportunity for those making the switch.
Though this transition may prove to be a challenge, many vendors have willingly made the move, preferring the advantages of SC over VC. “It’s a whole new way of selling for most firms, but in most cases, a motivated company can be up and running in the marketplace in just a few months,” said Allan Peretz, President of Bold Retail, Inc.
The impact on advertising
Perhaps the biggest downside of Seller Central is the advertising limitations. 1P vendors have access to three main types of ads: Sponsored Product, Sponsored Brand and Product Display. Out of the box, Seller Central only gives access to sponsored product ads. 3P sellers can only access sponsored brand placements if they are registered with Amazon’s Brand Registry, which requires holding a trademark for the product. Product display placements are not available in SC at all.
Product display ads, which appear on the right side of a product detail page (PDP) below the buy box, serve several strategic functions. They can be used by vendors to advertise on their own PDPs in order to prevent competitors from gaining visibility there, to generate brand awareness by targeting shoppers by category or interest, and to upsell or cross-sell (for instance, by placing a roduct display ad for a brand’s bestselling product on all other PDPs). Losing access to these ads while moving from vendor to seller is a major downside.
Many sellers will also see a decrease in ad performance. Amazon’s advertising algorithms leverage historical campaign performance data for relevancy and moving from vendor to seller often means starting over from scratch. Without historical data, a new Seller Central campaign, even if it’s otherwise identical to a previous Vendor Central campaign, will take time to regain the lost momentum.
The transition will be rocky, but it’s not all doom and gloom. In recent years Amazon has been improving SC to have much of the same functionality as VC, so it’s likely that at some point Amazon will introduce product display ads for sellers. In the meantime, the ability for sellers to directly manage product pricing gives them more strategic control, allowing them to execute marketing campaigns without the risk of lost profit margins or inter-channel conflicts.
How to make a smooth transition
If possible, register with Amazon’s Brand Registry. This is available to trademark holders and will provide you with two important capabilities:
Sponsored brand ads. These appear as banner ads at the top of a search results page. According to our proprietary Amazon keyword tracking data, these ads are often more effective than product ads for attracting new customers in the discovery phase of their path to purchase.
Brand protection. PDPs that are not controlled by vendors or sellers within Amazon’s Brand Registry can be edited by any third party selling the product. If you’re registered, you can protect your brand by preventing 3Ps from editing your content.
After registering your Seller Central account, recreate your product listing using the same ASINs. This will allow you to inherit the PDPs from your vendor account keeping all the valuable ratings, reviews and search relevancy you’ve built up over the years.
Transfer your ad campaigns by bulk downloading them from Vendor Central and reuploading to Seller Central when launching new campaigns. This will save you all the time and labor required to rebuild your campaign structure, keywords and bids. Note that you may be required to update the format to match the SC bulk operations template (ie., changing the advertised ASINs to the corresponding SKUs).
When creating new ASINs, it’s important to boost traffic early on to establish placement and visibility. Kickstart initial sales with coupons and other promotions and leverage the early reviewer program to incentivize authentic reviews from Amazon shoppers so that you can quickly populate your PDPs with ratings and reviews.
Transitioning from a wholesale supplier to a marketplace seller can take several months. With the mounting evidence that Amazon is indeed planning to reduce smaller vendors in favor of taking their “hands off the wheel” and reducing direct human intervention in their retail business, it’s a good idea for vendors to have a backup plan in place.
“They will have to learn how to directly manage pricing and promotion, collect sales tax, deal with customer questions and complaints online, handle returns and make significant changes to how they manage and track inventory,” said Peretz. “Most companies will benefit from a little help on the front-end to develop a custom approach that fits with their existing processes, systems and organization.”
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
Melissa Burdick is the president of Pacvue and is an expert in designing for online and e-commerce marketing strategies. A 10-year Amazon veteran, Melissa helped launch the Amazon CPG/Health and Beauty retail business, building a business from the ground up with an evolving strategy to sell profitably online. She was an early leader of the Amazon Media Group, launching the first vendor display video ad and developed and grew the Amazon advertising business. Melissa is well known as an e-commerce thought leader and participates as a speaker at e-commerce conferences and industry podcasts.
It’s been a busy year for Boston-based digital experience platform Acquia. Following a majority investment by Vista Equity Partners in September, the company has announced its third acquisition of 2019 with the purchase of customer data platform AgilOne.
The CDP space has seen a lot of activity this year with global powerhouses like Adobe and Salesforce investing heavily in the technology. Bringing AgilOne’s capabilities to Acquia’s Open Digital Experience platform could help bolster the company’s offering by differentiating itself from the bigger vendors.
Acquia also acquired Mautic and Cohesion earlier this year and plans to add AgilOne’s machine learning capabilities to its Open Digital Experience Platform.
Why we care
AgilOne’s CDP pulls together data from online and offline technology platforms to build a single system of record, allowing brands to build better customer relationships and increase customer lifetime value. Its machine learning capabilities unify and cleanse customer data to enable effective segmentation practices.
Teams can bring their own machine learning models, choose from AgilOne’s pre-built models to automate segmentation or configure business-specific customization into their pre-built models, which are then accessible across the entire platform.
“Built on open source technology, AgilOne and Acquia together will bring in data from any third-party system via open APIs, making it much easier for marketers to gain this single view of the customer and deliver better, more relevant customer experiences and analytics across every channel,” said Dries Buytaert, Acquia’s co-founder, CTO, and chairman.
Rather than being locked-in by another vendor’s restrictions or limited to their marketing tools, Acquia’s open environment allows users to build and control their own integrations with other platforms. AgilOne’s capabilities should help tie together disparate data sets within a brand’s Acquia’s environment.
More on the news:
A recent study from Acquia showed that nearly three-quarters of marketers feel that technology has made it harder to deliver personalized experiences, with data being the foundation of the challenge.
AgilOne will be available to Acquia customers as both a standalone offering and as part of the Acquia Open Marketing Cloud.
About The Author
Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media’s Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.
The UK goes to the polls this week and the governing Conservatives have already made headlines for their online activities. Luke Richards dives into the political battleground that is the Google SERPs – and provides his analysis of the manifesto promises relevant to the digital business community.
As the UK heads towards its third general election in four years, the two main parties – Conservatives and Labour – both seem to agree that investment in digital technologies is crucial to tackling challenges within the economy, the environment, and the country’s working relationship with the rest of the world after Brexit.
Both parties have also invested a significant amount of their marketing budgets in their digital campaigns.
These past few weeks we’ve seen examples of good and downright poor practice when it comes to search engine marketing. We’ve seen varying success in search visibility, online sentiment, and traffic. And the content of the manifestos themselves – for a digital/tech business audience – makes for fascinating reading in light of the challenges I’ve mentioned above.
Whitepaper
Here is my analysis.
Search visibility of the manifestos
We are massively lucky in the UK with the amount of transparency and information at our fingertips as we decide who to vote for in elections.
There are bad actors, as we will discover later, but sites such as They Work For You, Vote For Policies, and The Political Compass all help to separate the quality content from the noise. And with just a couple of clicks, we can have immediate access to any manifesto.
Even before we’ve clicked through to the Conservatives’ manifesto landing page, we already know what the party’s central plan is – should they command a majority in the next parliament: “toget Brexit done.”
UK elections Conservatives manifesto landing page SEO meta content
The “get Brexit done” mantra is one that is repeated countless times in the manifesto itself. I’d expected that the Conservative SEO team would be looking to get some visibility for this as a keyphrase. But a quick search for this finds the domain languishing only on page two of Google’s SERPs amid much negative press critical of this populist sloganeering.
Interestingly, the Liberal Democrats’ (a right-wing pro-Europe party) are targeting this key phrase as part of their paid search campaign – with their sponsored ads appear in position zero of the SERPs.
Beyond this, there isn’t much more to the search result save for the “vote conservative” call-to-action in the title and the URL. It’s notable for its brevity, leaving much of the rest of the SERPs open to be filled by positive and negative press, including two articles from The Daily Telegraph (a newspaper which previously employed Conservative leader Boris Johnson) and a well-ranked piece by Prospect magazine describing the party as a “threat to human rights”.
At first glance, the Labour party has adhered much better to onsite SEO best practice.
Their site links are well-served by Google. They command much of the SERP real estate and appear very useful to the user.
UK elections Manifesto Labour party Google SERP rich links
The choice for site links is a little surprising. The link to the “Accessible Manifesto” is a nice touch – showing consideration to web users who have difficulty reading the text. But the other links don’t really relate directly to the key policy points in the document itself such as their Green Industrial Revolution and National Education Service.
The closest the Labour search result has to a call-to-action is – the “be part of our movement – with your email address…” element, but it isn’t massively compelling. Another misstep is that the PDF for Labour’s 2015 manifesto is still live and ranking well in position four of SERPs, which could quite easily confuse and frustrate users.
Sentiment elsewhere in the SERPs is more nuanced than what we see for the Conservatives. However, again, right-wing newspaper The Daily Telegraph takes position two and three of the SERPs – and although not immediately negative – one can imagine these articles aren’t massively objective after the user is moved to click through (although this content is behind a paywall).
Search traffic comparison
In the battle for search traffic, the Labour manifesto is vastly outperforming the Conservatives.
UK elections search traffic comparison showing the Labour Manifesto outperforming the Conservatives
At its peak – shortly after publication at the end of November – the Labour manifesto got three times as much traffic as the Conservative manifesto did when it performed best on November 24th.
The related queries according to Google Trends are illuminating. “Labour manifesto waspi” is clearly the biggest policy point in search terms online. Another breakout keyphrase is “fake labour manifesto” highlighting some of the underhand tactics employed by the Conservatives (as we’ll discuss below).
For the Conservatives, related queries are dominated by long-tail keyphrases that users are typing in to differentiate the new UK Conservative manifesto – “conservative manifesto 2019 UK” from the Canadian equivalent “conservative manifesto 2019 Canada”. Sadly for Prime Minister Johnson, there’s no appearance of “get Brexit done”. Do Google’s users actually care about this policy? Perhaps not.
Banned Google ads and misleading websites
The appearance of the breakout search term “fake labour manifesto” as highlighted at Google Trends points to some of the more bizarre aspects of this general election. The Conservatives have appeared to dabble in black hat tactics, and outright fakery, to try and confuse voters and diffuse the positive results Labour is clearly getting online.
To coincide with the launch of Labour’s manifesto, the Conservative party set up a fake website at labourmanifesto.co.uk and launched a paid search campaign to capture clicks from the SERPs.
Google banned eight search ads of the Conservatives due to policy breach
Google promptly banned eight of the Conservatives’ search ads
Google has promptly banned eight of the Conservatives’ search ads. The fake website is still live, but only really visible, currently, when searching for “fake labour manifesto” – and even then it appears below several news sources highlighting the Conservatives unethical behavior.
Google’s ad policy states:
“We value honesty and fairness, so we don’t allow the promotion of products or services that are designed to enable dishonest behaviour.”
I’d be very surprised if the Conservatives’ digital marketing team don’t know this.
But for the sake of democracy, it’s good to see the search engine stick to their principles here.
Promises to increase connectivity
Of the whole election so far, the digital policy which has perhaps received the most headlines is Labour’s “free full-fiber broadband to all by 2030”.
Back in 2016, Jeremy Corbyn won re-election as leader of the Labour Party on the back of such policy announcements as The Digital Democracy Manifesto. It’s not surprising that there is much reference to the emancipatory power of emerging technology and being properly connected in the current manifesto.
The digital democracy manifesto
As the document states, the intentions behind the free broadband initiative are to – “boost jobs, tackle regional inequality and improve quality of life as part of a mission to connect the country”. It is firmly rooted in a fairly detailed nationalization plan which will see the establishment of British Broadband with two arms, British Digital Infrastructure (BDI) and British Broadband Service (BBS), as well as bringing the broadband-relevant parts of BT into public ownership.
While it is a little more buried in the Conservative manifesto, they have their own broadband plan too.
UK election – Conservative and Unionist party Manifesto 2019
As is the case for nearly every policy point in the document, it is presented in reference to the UK’s ongoing relationship with the EU:
“We are Europe’s technology capital, producing start-ups and success stories at a dazzling pace. But not everyone can share the benefits”, it states.
“We intend to bring full fiber and gigabit-capable broadband to every home andbusiness across the UK by 2025.”
The policy is highlighted again in later pages as part of the government’s pledge to support rural life and coastal communities. “£5 billion in funding already promised”, it says. But beyond this, there is no detail on how much this broadband provision will cost to the end-user, nor to what degree it will be delivered by the private or public sector.
Education, skills and new technology
While the Conservative manifesto is presented through the lens of Brexit, the Labour manifesto is largely shaped by the environment and their central proposal to kickstart a ‘green industrial revolution.’
A skilled workforce is integral to this. The proposed National Education Service promises free education to everyone throughout their lives. This is of particular interest to those working in digital where we see re-training and re-skilling as increasingly important strategies to plug the skills gap in a fast-changing sector.
“With automation and the Green Industrial Revolution bringing major changes to industry,’ the manifesto states, ‘it is more important than ever that people have the opportunity to retrain and upskill throughout their lives…England already faces a shortage of people with higher-level technical qualifications, and demand for these skills will only grow as we create new green jobs.”
Skills are also a key feature for the Conservatives, despite the document failing to acknowledge the current gap businesses face.
A proposed £3 billion National Skills Fund is earmarked to upskill the British workforce.
“This fund will provide matching funding for individuals and SMEs for high-quality education and training”, the manifesto states.
“A proportion will be reserved for further strategic investment in skills, and we will consult widely on the overall design.”
The Conservatives also promise a further £2 billion to upgrade the entire further education college estate as well as planning to build 20 Institutes of Technology. Although there is little mention of what ends the skills fund and this education investment is for. Services are given a passing mention – “we should open up trade in services, in which the majority of us work and where most new jobs will be created.” – but there is little detail on what these service jobs are expected to be, how they will be supported by the state, and how they will be opened up.
Digital experience in health and public services
Healthcare is a massive issue in this election. Both parties are looking to emerging technologies as a way to help alleviate strains from underfunding and/or an aging population, as well as to improve diagnosis and patient experience.
Labour is pledging to increase spending across the health sector by an average of 4.3% per year. AI and cyber technology are two things earmarked for some of this investment, as well as state-of-the-art medical equipment. Their manifesto also acknowledges the importance of data rights to citizens within this increasingly digital area of our lives, promising to ensure:
‘Data protection for NHS and patient information.’
‘NHS data is not exploited by international technology and pharmaceutical corporations.’
The Conservative manifesto is not short on health tech promises either. They pledge to introduce an annual Health Technology Summit and they have also promised £1 billion extra annual social care funding to go towards – in part – new technology and facilities.
In the arena of citizen protections, the Conservative manifesto also proposes a new approach to cybercrime. “We will embrace new technologies and crackdown on online crimes”, the document states. “We will create a new national cybercrime force and empower the police to safely use new technologies like biometrics and artificial intelligence, along with the use of DNA, within a strict legal framework.”
The Labour party manifesto also devotes considerable wordcount to cybersecurity:
“Cybercrime and cyberwarfare are growing, all around the world. Every aspect of our lives, from the NHS to our nuclear facilities”, it states.
In response, the party plans to review two existing bodies – the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency – to increase powers, capacity, and skills where necessary.
Labour also wants to extend more rights to citizens online with their proposed Charter of Digital Rights, as well as planning to introduce imprints for digital political adverts in an effort to combat fake news. Additionally, as part of their welfare plans, the party wants to give users multichannel access (online, telephone, face-to-face, and outreach support) to make help and assistance easier to access for all.
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Costings
Both parties want big digital corporations to pay more tax. For Labour, this is a costed part of their plan to help fund their free broadband rollout and other projects (£23.7 billion from reversing cuts to corporation tax, £6.3 billion from unitary tax on multinationals, and £6.2 billion from their Fair Tax Programme).
UK election – Costings of the Labour party
The Conservatives have also promised to implement a digital services tax although there is no mention in the manifesto or the accompanying costings document as to what this tax rate will be, what it will bring in to the government, and which digital services this is aimed at.
On this front, my guess is Google, Facebook, Amazon et al. will be more concerned if a Labour government gets in than if a Conservative one is re-elected.
Much reference is made to British Broadband in Labour’s costings document and it is easy to make the link between their tax and spend plans. When looking at broadband in the Conservative costings document, however, its cost as part of their infrastructure strategy is reiterated, but it’s hard to see how it will actually be funded.
Further analysis of both party’s costings documents highlights the divide between them
When it comes to skills, the link between the money that’s needed for Labour to roll out their Lifelong Learning is easy to see across two tables. Yet the Conservative manifesto and costings document are harder to process. There are numerous tables, as well as proposed investments such as the ‘National Skills Fund worth £3 billion’ (as it is described in the manifesto) looking like it won’t receive any more than ~£600 million per year from 2021 until the end of the parliament (adding up to just £1.8 billion in total).
Analysis of Labour and Conservative party’s costing documents
This trend continues in the context of health and public services technology.
£1 billion for social care per year is certainly a welcome promise by the Conservatives – with an aging population, staff shortages, and the availability of emerging technologies that help with remote care and increased independence for citizens. But when turning to the costings document again, this is nearly a third of the total income from the first year of their Sources of Revenue table and it doesn’t fill me with confidence that a party operating in the wake of their own austerity measures can actually deliver these PR-quotable lumps of cash.
Takeaways for the parties
The search campaigns by both parties in the lead up to this election have positive and negative points.
The simplistic and memorable SEO approach from the Conservatives may well be all they need to convince voters. But through the lens of the Google SERPs, the “get Brexit done” slogan has brought about some negative sentiment and doesn’t seem to be driving the traffic as we might expect.
Closing note regarding the Labour
Labour, on the other hand, has seemingly tried to capture attention via a number of issues. This is reflected in the manifesto itself, the site structure and onsite SEO, and the traffic success the domain is having with niche key phrases such as “labour manifesto waspi”.
Closing note regarding the Conservative
Yet, to look at the above and assume that the Conservatives have been lazy with their online campaign is wrong. Their paid search activity appears to have been synchronized and calculated. And rather than put forward their own policies in an attempt to influence clicks to their manifesto content, they’ve turned their efforts to misleading users and firing cheap shots at Labour policies which are seeing a positive response online.
Of course, these underhand tactics within the SERPs weren’t an isolated incident.
The Conservatives were also criticized (by The New York Times and others) when their press office passed off partisan opinion as objective ‘fact-checking’ on Twitter. The party’s activists have also been found to be posing as the Green Party in Facebook ads (in an attempt to split the left-leaning vote).
In the world of digital marketing, all these channels carry weight, but I would argue that it is the party’s search activities that are the most worrying from a democratic point of view. There’s no shifting the blame to frivolous press office employees or activists here – fake microsites and time-sensitive paid search campaigns are far more strategic, and those in the upper echelons of the party should bear at least some responsibility.
Takeaways for digital businesses
The Conservatives have been punished by Google for some of their activities, but whether they are punished at the ballot box remains to be seen. In the world of search, it is never worth trying to deceive users or impersonate competitors for clicks.
Those of us working in the digital industries are very aware of both the challenges and the opportunities in a technologically transformed world. The skills gap is a very immediate issue for all businesses adopting digital tools and emerging technologies. It is important that there are state-supported programs to try and close this gap.
In the UK, we also need a government committed to connecting those in society who are left behind when it comes to broadband provision. This is significant for those wanting to start up digital businesses away from urban centers, as well as for those whose digital audiences will grow with the rollout of dependable internet in rural areas.
In the business context
Consumers expect data protections and commitment to security – as well as experiences that are seamless across channels and customer-led. As more and more parts of our lives become entwined with digital technology – be it in healthcare or other public services – we need to be able to trust that attitudes towards rights and data are citizen-led. Members of the public must be educated, empowered, and safe.
There is much pessimism about what is around the corner for the UK – a country faced with Brexit, the environmental crisis, and more besides. In a superficial sense, it’s possible to read these manifestos as a business owner and be daunted by the detail of corporation tax rises in the Labour document while feeling that the Conservatives would be a profit-friendly prospect. But it is the lack of detail in the Conservative manifesto which should be a major worry to corporations: the ‘digital services tax,’ the commitment to seemingly arbitrary investment lumps, and even ‘get Brexit done’ rings hollow after three years of failed negotiations – how can any corporation trust this?
A government that is committed to ethical, reasonable, transparent, and long term ideas about how we can work and live together is one that I feel we should be supporting at this election and those forthcoming in the US and elsewhere. After all, these are the virtues I would expect of a modern business faced with the challenges and opportunities of a future of digital transformation and emerging technology. It seems justified to expect this in politics too.
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“People’s privacy is incredibly important to Facebook and we take any potential abuse of our service very seriously,” said Facebook Director of Product Management Mary Ku, “Last year, when researchers found this issue, we suspended it and after working with those researchers to address the issue, we are now reinstating it.”
Facebook reports it worked on three key changes to improve security around its Custom Audiences reach estimate tool: privacy, detection and new restrictions. The new restrictions include Custom Audience rate limits — the number of audiences or API calls an account can have. The newly introduced rate limits have been designed to limit potential misuse and will not impact most advertisers, according to Facebook.
Why we should care
Reach estimates were a handy tool for advertisers, making it possible to determine approximate campaign sizes and manage budgets and bidding activity accordingly — without taking up a lot of time and effort on their part.
“When thinking of the last year, the absence of the product didn’t impact the way we crafted and developed strategies, but rather impacted the precision of our strategies,” said 360i Vice President of Paid Social Strategy Lead Phillip Huynh,”Instead of having more precise reach estimates, we often used proxies on our end that needed to be monitored closely to ensure that we didn’t over-under saturate the market.”
Huynh said the reintroduction of reach estimates will allow his agency to activate “closer” to the data they planned against — a boon for both brands and brand audiences on the platform as it helps deliver more relevant ads.
“We’re really excited about having this brought back to the platform as the reach estimate tool allows us to plan more efficiently and effectively,” said Huynh, “It does this by giving us a clear understanding of the size of our audiences on the buying platform, which helps inform ideal budgets and bids.”
More on the news
When Facebook first announced the reach estimate vulnerability last year, the company said it did not believe the tool had been used maliciously.
Since removing the tool, Facebook has been working with the researchers who notified the Facebook’s Bug Bounty program that the reach estimate tool could be exploited, along with its Business Integrity team.
To resolve the issue, Facebook said it has added complexity to the rounding logic for reach estimates and improved back-end detection processes to surface potential misuse.
About The Author
Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.
