Digital Marketing Round-Up: Top News in March 2023

March was an eventful month for social media platforms, with TikTok and Facebook rolling out significant updates to their paid advertising features. Instagram also caught the attention of users with its new 'collaboration collection' function, while Google caused a stir with its latest core update that may have impacted your website’s organic search rankings.

TikTok’s New Keyword Insights Tool

TikTok adds more value to their Creative Center with the introduction of a new research tool, ‘Keyword Insights’, enabling creators to find the right keywords for better TikTok visibility and engagement.

This tool makes it easier for TikTok advertisers to search through a comprehensive list of frequently used keywords, negating the need for manual analysis within the app. Additionally, this feature comes equipped with key metrics such as clickthrough-rate and popularity, enabling advertisers to make more accurate estimates on their ad's performance.

A key feature that we find most helpful for advertisers is the ability to view “Related Videos”, which provides deeper insights into the ad format and captions used.According to TikTok:

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

Read more: https://ads.tiktok.com/business/creativecenter/keyword-insights/pc/en 

GA4 Audience Builder now Accessible on Google Ads

Google adds a new feature to their Google Ads UI, embedding Google Analytics 4 audience builder to the platform to allow for easier audience creation to apply directly to Google Ad campaigns. 

A new cross-product access management model is also introduced to seamlessly manage the new feature, whereby GA4 property admins will have the ability to assign roles and specific permissions to certain Google Ads users.

To access this new feature, you will need to link your Google Ads account to Google Analytics:

1. In Google Analytics, click “Admin”.
2. Under Product Links, click “Google Ads Links”.
3. Click “Link”
4. Click “Choose Google Ads accounts”, then select the ones you want to link.

Read more: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9164320#030123&zippy=%2Creleases 

Instagram’s New Group Post Sharing: Collaborative Collection

Meta adds a new collaborative function within Instagram to further capitalise on the social app’s shift into the DMs. This new group post sharing option allows users to share and save posts with their friends who can then also manage what’s saved within the album.

This encourages quality engagement from users especially on topics that matter, which are often hidden behind the plethora of trendy Reels that the algorithm prefers to showcase.

Facebook has been making deliberate moves to shift engagement into the DMs, which began with the introduction of the “status updates” bubble which you can read more about in last month’s update.

To create your first collaborative collection on Instagram:

1. Tap on the Save button below the post, then tap ‘New Collection’
2. Enter a ‘Collection Name’
3. Tap on the toggle to ‘Allow friends to join this collection’
4. Select the friends you would like to add, then tap ‘Save’

Read more: https://help.instagram.com/3129045784070725/

Google Core Update March 2023 - 2 Weeks Long Release is Over

Google finally finished rolling out their first broad core update for the year on 28th March 2023, a follow up of the last update that shook up the SERP in September 2022. This recent update is more impactful than the last, taking a whole 2 weeks to roll out completely.

Google makes significant updates to their algorithm every year to ensure that they continue to present helpful and reliable results to searches. The update assesses all the existing content on Google and decides which web pages to showcase in the Top 10 of Google SERP. 

If you have been affected by the latest core update, it may not be due to any shortcomings in the quality of your content. Google assures users that the algorithm seeks to reward the best content and encourages users to keep that in focus when publishing on any website.

Read more: https://developers.google.com/search/updates/core-updates 

Meta Rolls Out Click-to-Messenger Ads on Facebook Reels Ads

As more social media users look to direct messaging over sharing on their main feed, Meta seeks to create new opportunities for businesses, by first making ‘Click-to-Messenger’ ads available for Facebook Reels Ads.

Facebook aims to develop more products that foster direct communication between businesses and customers after a recently conducted survey revealed that 50% of people had sent a message to a business after seeing their Reel.

According to Meta:

“Typically, we show Click to Messenger ads to people who are most likely to initiate a conversation with a business on WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram. With this update, advertisers who use the Sales, Engagement or Traffic objectives to add a “Send Message” button to their Facebook Reels ads will now give people an option to start a conversation in WhatsApp right from the ad.”

Along with this update, Meta also made “Whatsapp Conversion Optimisation” available to advertisers for Facebook Reels Ads to provide deeper insights on the effectiveness of incorporating Whatsapp into the conversion process.

Read more: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/helping-businesses-grow-with-video 

Conclusion

At Heroes of Digital, we strive to keep our clients informed by searching for clear and comprehensive information on updates and new features, allowing us to act quickly on any necessary changes that will help minimize the impact on their campaigns.

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