Less than 24 hours after we learned about Meta’s smear campaign against rival social network TikTok, it has been confirmed that Facebook was showing harmful content to users over a period of six months.
The failure was detailed in an internal document obtained by the Verge. It detailed a “massive ranking failure” where Facebook’s systems failed to suppress posts containing nudity, violence and propaganda from Russian state media.
Why we care. Facebook wants to create a brand-safe environment. They’re failing. When Facebook allows ads to appear alongside the types of content it failed to downrank here, that’s incredibly troubling for brands and publishers. Facebook has a history of self-inflicted wounds, scandals and a lack of accountability when issues like these have been exposed and made headlines. To date, it hasn’t irreparably hurt them. The big question is how long brands will stop investing money in a platform that has shown great interest in taking their money but little interest in protecting them from being associated with such harmful content.
What happened. Over a period of six months, due to a ranking bug, Facebook’s feed distributed an unknown amount of dubious content, including debunked misinformation, that it typically downranks. This helped increase views for this content by up to 30 percent globally, the Verge reported.
Meta demotes several types of content – clickbait, engagement bait, and several types of low-quality content and spam. You can read the full list here.
What Meta said. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Joe Osborne confirmed the company had detected inconsistencies in demoting posts on five occasions, starting in October, which correlated with small, temporary increases to internal metrics. The company blamed it on a software bug and have applied needed fixes March 11. Osborne said the bug did not have “any meaningful, long-term impact on our metrics.”
Climbing the corporate ladder isn’t always the most straightforward process, especially for paid search marketers. Professionals seeking to grow their careers need to map out a path, accounting for their unique roles within their organizations.
“The most important thing is to look at your current position,” said Pascal Skropke, CMO of Design-Bestseller, at SMX Next. “Not everybody has the opportunity to work at a fast-growing e-commerce company or startup.”
He added, “Look at where you are and find out if it’s possible to take steps within your company — and understand what your company needs to succeed.”
Skropke says marketers seeking to climb this ladder should establish an “anchor point” within their company — the cross-section of their company’s needs and their career goals. One of these points is the issue of campaign advertising measurement — the lack of direction, accurate data models, and resources for many brands in the digital retail space.
Here are some of the key measurement challenges paid search marketers can help their companies with.
Address issues in advertising spend and ROI
“Performance advertising is killing it for most retailers,” said Andreas Reiffen, founder and CEO of Crealytics, in the same presentation. “At the same time, we see legacy retailers falling behind.”
Despite impressive increases in compound annual growth rate for online retailers such as Etsy, Boohoo, and Farfetch (44%, 55%, and 64%, respectively,), more traditional retailers are falling behind, even in the e-commerce sphere. Reiffen noted that although some of these legacy brands are meeting their KPIs, their slow overall growth could be a major issue down the road.
“The question we need to ask ourselves is, ‘Why am I seeing great results when the company isn’t growing?’” said Reiffen. “The issue we are all facing today is that the measurement is broken. The methodology that we use to track conversions and conversion values — one click, last click, or many clicks — is misleading us because people don’t necessarily buy when they click on ads.”
He added, “They might have happened to click on ads when they purchased, but there’s no direct correlation.”
Source: Andreas Reiffen
Inaccurate measurement models can disrupt return on ad spend (ROAS) projections, making it that much harder for legacy brands to stay competitive.
Paid search marketers and managers can help executives of legacy-style brands address these discrepancies by optimizing paid advertising spending — adopting more accurate tracking models and allocating spend more effectively. This can help marketers establish more authority within their brand and encourage executives to lean on them for their expertise in the future.
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“We’re seeing big companies like the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey building departments for data analytics,” said Skropke. “This is a sign that analytics is not just something that the data nerd is working on, but something that’s now on C-level.”
Source: Pascal Skropke
Data matters, not just to search marketers, but to all those in brand leadership positions. The sooner search marketers can encourage their managers and company executives to consult paid media analytics when making business decisions, the more respect they’ll garner from those same decision-makers.
“If you work in a paid search manager role on an operation level, it’s rare that you would be asked to do these things,” said Reiffen. “But it’s a major problem that is present now on the C-level.”
He added, “Measurement is the most important thing to get right, so that’s where we see a good opportunity to step up and challenge the numbers.”
Create a growth strategy and align target market goals
Inaccurate measurement clearly causes issues in advertising ROI and data analytics. Unfortunately, it can also disrupt brand growth by derailing target market strategies.
“Wrong targeting leads to poor results,” said Skropke. “So, we should always ask what’s driving the value for the business. Is this the top-line revenue or is it the profitable acquisition of new customers?”
Source: Pascal Skropke
Whether it’s targeting a disproportionate amount of existing customers or pushing products that have lower than average profit margins, C-level executives will inevitably get parts of the targeting and growth strategy wrong. This is where paid search managers can share their expertise and help leadership set clear, actionable goals.
“So, where’s the opportunity here?” asked Reiffen. “It’s in taking the time to explain this, giving [leadership] examples.”
He added, “Start stepping up and explaining that it’s the targets themselves that are limiting performance.”
Google has announced that the first round of testing is here for its crucial Privacy Sandbox initiative. In this round of testing developers will gain access to Privacy Sandbox’s newest measurement proposals: Topics, FLEDGE and Attribution Reporting. These ad technologies are the replacement for the beleaguered FLoC initiative that was killed off back in January.
What are these technologies again?
FLEDGE, or First Locally Executed Decision over Groups Experiment, calculates ad auction data in the browser itself instead of at the server to help increase privacy by limiting a user’s data flow.
Topics is a technology that helps identify interests for advertising while retaining greater user privacy.
Attribution reporting allows for better measurement on the conversion from ad clicks or views.
Together these technologies are aimed at helping limit the use of personal data while ensuring accuracy in reporting.
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Origin trials. Announced back in 2020, origin trials are a way that developers can test experimental features for a limited time before the public. These trials generally occur on a first-party basis only and on one “origin”. As of today, developers will be able to see and test the code for Topics, FLEDGE, and Attribution Reporting in the Canary version of Chrome.
After this is iteration is rolled out, testing will then begin in a limited Chrome beta and then to a stable version of Chrome. The origin trials for the above-mentioned Privacy Sandbox technologies are worldwide.
User controls. A nice new addition announced today are updated settings that allow participants to understand and manage their information usage more clearly. This will allow users to manage their interests or turn off trials altogether.
Why we care. Many of these new privacy technologies have been hypothetical until today. It’s great to see this next phase of Google’s (well needed) new ad technology begin to come to fruition. The feedback and news that will be generated in this stage of testing should help marketers prepare for the realities that we will soon face with Google’s initiative.
Interest Category targeting in Facebook may be up to 33% inaccurate, according to new study from North Carolina State University. The NC State researchers conducted two separate experiments, the first to find out which activities were associated with “interest” on Facebook and the second to analyze the accuracy of user interests from participants around the world. The results were far from comforting.
Experiment 1. The first experiment involved setup of 14 accounts, a small sample size, that merely viewed or scrolled through a page in order to see if those topics within the content consumed would be pulled into the “Interest Categories” accounts. The goal was to see what interests would then be associated with the newly formed account and to qualitatively infer how accurate the newly assigned interests were.
The findings show 33.22% of the inferred interests were either inaccurate or irrelevant. “The key finding here is that Facebook takes an aggressive approach to interest inference,” Aafaq Sabir, lead author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at NC State, said.
Experiment 2. To get even deeper, the NC State team wanted to see if the findings would hold true for a more diverse group of users. The 146 study participants were selected by Amazon Mechanical Turk from “different parts of the world”. A browser extension would then extract data from the participants’ Facebook accounts and question the participant about the validity of the interest data.
This study found 29.3% of the interests that Facebook had listed for participants were not actually of interest. “That’s comparable to what we saw in our controlled experiments,” said Anupam Das, co-author of the paper and an assistant professor of computer science at NC State.
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What’s unclear. With samples sizes this small, we should take this study with a grain of salt. While the data is unflattering to Facebook’s targeting, much of the experiment is unclear on the parameters used to determine what is of interest and what is not of interest. Additionally, the second experiment in this study relies on user feedback that does not appear to have quantitative parameters in place for reporting, which may muddy results. Lastly, the participants selected in the survey were in different locations, but sourced similarly using a very specific platform – Amazon Mechanical Turk. By choosing participants tied to one source, it may not be a truly accurate representation of Facebook users as a whole.
Why we care. Most ad targeting isn’t perfect. For example, if logged in, you can see what Google targets your ads to and see what Facebook thinks that you are interested in. The reality is that no targeting is perfect, but the 30-33% inaccuracy found in the study is concerning. Before pulling ad spends to different platforms, it is worthwhile to assess the current account performance and make adjustments from that data instead of a study. Finally, the first portion of this study does show that basic content consumption can influence interests, so again check your results to ensure that your targeting is in fact working for you.
Google has announced two new features for US based and English language searchers, around helping those searchers evaluate information within Google Search and verify sources and claims of those listings. One is a feature to show a highly cited label in the Top Stories results and the other is improving the about this result feature for rapidly evolving topics.
Highly cited label. Google will soon launch in the US English search results a new highly cited label that will appear on Top Stories within Google’s mobile search results. This label will help searchers identify stories that have been frequently cited by other news organizations.
Google said this will help elevate original reporting that it first spoke about in 2019 as an area Google wanted to improve on. This label will give confidence to searchers that the story is cited by many other journalists and probably offers unique and valuable information that you can rely on. Google said this helps searchers find the “most helpful or relevant information for a news story.”
A Google spokesperson told us this label is building on the search company’s efforts for the fact check explorer.
How do you get this label? Google basically said it is about who is getting linked to across the web and which stories are the most cited.
Screenshot of the highly cited label in Top Stories
About this result for rapidly evolving topics. Google is also using the about this result feature to help communicate to searchers about the potential issues with search results related to a topic or breaking news story that is rapidly evolving. Google will show the notice that the search results for a query may be changing because the topic itself is rapidly evolving. This adds to the about this result feature for rapidly evolving topics where Google would show a notice that reads “it looks like these results are changing quickly.”
Google then shows information on how to check the source of the result and also asks the searcher if they might want to come back later in a few hours as Google figures out what is best to rank for those queries. Here is a screenshot of this feature:
Here Google is providing information literacy tips, along with a link to a new resource page with best practices for checking the credibility of information. Plus Google is reminding the searcher that you can check whether a source is trusted on a topic, or come back later when there’s more information available.
Why we care. Both of these labels and features may impact how your site is displayed in the Google search results. A story with a “highly cited label” most likely will generate a higher click through rate than a story without the label. Also, if you are covering breaking news on a topic, there is a chance you might get less traffic if Google shows this notice to searchers that they should come back later.
The Google search interface changes can directly impact your site’s traffic, so keep an eye out for these features and how they may impact your site.
What contributed to the significant growth of ad takedowns? Advancements in machine learning, multilingual models and human moderation, according to Microsoft’s 2021 Ads Safety Report. However, Microsoft noted ongoing and rising threats, including fake celebrity-endorsed investment ads and more sophisticated account takeover attempts.
Billions of bad ads. Yes, billions. Here are some of the statistics Microsoft shared about its year of fighting low-quality ads, bad actors and scammers:
More than 3 billion ads were taken down.
270,000 accounts were suspended. (This is a decrease from 2020, when 300,000 accounts were suspended.)
400,000 websites were banned from its network. (This was an increase compared to 2020, when 270,000 sites were removed.)
Microsoft also investigated about 70,000 complaints about ads that weren’t complying with its advertising policies in 2021. About 60 percent of those were found to be in violation. Trademark infringement was the most common type of complaint.
Misleading investment scheme ads. The number of fake, celebrity-endorsed investment ads increased in 2021. Microsoft said it tried to catch and remove these ads in real-time. Microsoft suspended nearly 10,000 accounts and removed 200,000 ads promoting these schemes.
More sophisticated account takeovers. A top threat to Microsoft’s advertisers in 2021: bad actors using techniques to get past multi-factor authentication. To combat this, Microsoft said it “made use of advertisers’ behavioral identity signals to detect such scenarios and protect our customers. We then shared best practices with our advertisers to help them not fall prey to new tactics.”
Why we care. Safety is crucial for advertisers and the audiences we want to reach. Search marketing fails when people lose trust in search engines because ads turn out to be scams or of low quality. It’s good to know that Microsoft’s mix of technology and processes is working – but new and old types of threats and attacks will continue to be a reality in 2022 for advertisers. Stay vigilant, my friends.
Google has created a new Data Studio template. You can use Google’s Search traffic monitoring dashboard to quickly see if there are any significant changes to the performance of your most important pages and help uncover whether you may have any potential SEO issues.
Google also announced that its Search Console connector now includes data on Discover and Google News traffic. This is similar to the data Google added to the Search Console Search Analytics API in October.
How to get the Dashboard. You can access the dashboard here.
Once it’s set up, you can choose the date range (it’s 28 days by default). Then you filter your data by pages, types, countries and devices.
How to set up the Dashboard. It’s pretty straightforward. Navigate to Data Studio and create a Search Console data source.
Choose the URL Impression table, which includes URL-level data for web, image, video, news, discover, and googleNews. The Property Parameter you choose will be your default in your report, but you can access the others via a filter.
Google added a couple of “bonus” tips:
Under report and page layout, set Display mode to Fit to width. This will make your dashboard mobile-friendly for monitoring on the go.
If you don’t have subdomains, consider removing your domain name (using a calculated field with the expression REGEXP_EXTRACT(Landing Page, ".*\\.com/(.*)$")). Google said this makes your tables less cluttered.
Why we care. This is another helpful Data Studio template from Google to visualize data as line charts, bar charts or tables. Discover and News traffic being added to the connector is also a welcome bonus. It’s critical to watch the metrics on your most important pages. This template should help make that task a bit easier.
Google will be ending support for Maximize Lift bidding for YouTube, the company said, leaving a TrueView, in-stream ads option behind as YouTube continues to enhance its ad offerings.
What it did. Maximize Lift was a very specific bidding strategy that worked in conjunction with Brand Lift measurement with a goal of hitting more of the right audience that was currently in the consideration phase. If you aren’t familiar with Brand Lift, it is a tool that helps to measure recall, awareness and consideration and requires a Google Account Rep to activate on your behalf.
Maximize Lift used details input by advertisers about their brands and products to generate content to be used in Brand Lift surveys. The survey responses were then used by Maximize Lift to focus on those consumers that may be the best fit for your products. Unlike other bidding types Maximize Lift didn’t optimize towards views, rather would optimize towards lift.
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“We launched Maximize Lift as a beta in 2018 to optimize TrueView in-stream campaigns,” a Google spokesperson said. “While we did see some success, we are sunsetting the bidding tool to focus on scalable solutions like skippable in-stream ads that are more in line with how advertisers want to buy.”
Maximize Lift was launched in 2018 with the allure of driving meaningful B2C results. Upon release, Google touted a 2x return on ad spend for COVERGIRL’s Lashblast Mascara product. However, it seems that there has been less and less focus lately on Brand Lift within YouTube.
Why we care. If you are an advertiser that uses Maximize Lift bidding, you’ll need to look for other solutions come April 1. Additionally, this change may alter the results that you see in Brand Lift if you have been leveraging Maximize Lift at the same time.
Kicking and screaming it is. Despite grumbling about Google Analytics 4, the vast majority of marketers tell us they plan to make the switch anyway, even if they aren’t very excited to.
What we found. About 70% of the 250 marketers we polled said they planned to switch and will handle the migration internally. Another 14% of respondents said they planned to switch but would hire outside consultants to help them get set up with GA4. Only 12% said they planned to explore other analytics platforms to use instead of GA4. The remaining 4% cited “other” scenarios, such as having already installed GA4 or that they use a different tool to handle their analytics now.
Why this is happening. Google this month said it plans to sunset Universal Analytics, the current version of GA, in July 2023. The company also said users would not be able to port over data from the older version to the new GA4. That news both stung users and gave them a reason to migrate sooner than later so they will have at least some historical data in the new platform.
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Why we care (and why we’re not surprised). On one hand, Google has never been shy about retiring platforms, or making platform changes, despite user outcry. But the pushback on Google’s decision here highlights the ubiquity of Google Analytics and its power as a free tool. If there were equivalent free alternatives then more people would be using them. While making to switch to something like Adobe Analytics could give users more control over their data, that comes with a price that may be too steep for some organizations.
It’s notable, though, that 14% said they plan to hire outside help. That shows how intricate some GA instances are today. That must seem more daunting to an organization when the platform you are migrating to is confusing and complicated, as marketers have complained about GA4.
The bright side. Analytics expert Charles Farina this week took the glass-half-full approach, highlighting 10 features in GA 4 that he’s looking forward to in a long Twitter thread. These include audience-based conversion tracking, time between interactions data, custom and trended funnels, improved event segments and massive improvements in debugging.
“At first look, Google Analytics 4 seems drastically different and that change can scare people off,” wrote Colleen Harris, a Google Analytics expert who runs our SMX Master Class on GA4, wrote for Search Engine Land around the time GA4 was first announced. “The good news is, as digital marketers, we’re all in the same boat of learning a whole new system. We also have time to learn this new tool.”
SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it thing, even if you or some of your clients wish it were. But all parties need to stay engaged in the project from start to finish for success.
That means communication is key. Having a plan for how you will communicate with your clients throughout the engagement is an important part of SEO project management.
Often when things go wrong, it’s not the work that’s the problem, it’s the client relationship. This is true not just of marketing projects. The Project Management Institute (PMI) reported that one out of five projects is unsuccessful due to ineffective communications.
In our experience working with clients, a good communications plan keeps projects on track. Plus, having frequent touchpoints can uplevel your brand and service and make for happier clients all around.
Here are eight communication touchpoints you can build into your client engagements.
1. Kickoff calls
I cannot stress enough the importance of having a productive kickoff call. Even though you may already know what to do — and even though you may have had many conversations leading up to the client signing on — you still need the kickoff call.
Here, everyone involved in the project (on your side and the client’s) gets up to speed on the scope of the work and what to expect. How often will you meet? What turnaround times will you need on deliverables and approvals? The kickoff meeting is your chance to lay out these procedural details.
Expectations are key to a successful project. The project team must understand the client’s expectations before starting their work and vice versa.
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Training your clients on SEO is a fantastic way to keep the lines of communication open as you discuss their projects’ details. How will they know what questions to ask if, for example, they have no idea what a meta tag is? Speaking the same language is very important, so make sure you have consistent training shared by all project members. The SMX Master Classes series can be a great step here.
If clients are already well-versed in SEO, your training is still key because it reinforces your approach to SEO — no two SEO vendors operate in the same way.
SEO training also helps familiarize clients with everything that goes into your SEO services. They’ll know, for example, that you’re not just waving some magic wand behind the scenes and *poof* rankings appear. Education builds value in the eyes of the client.
Conducting your training separately from your regular calls will allow you to keep the project work focused. Otherwise, you will spend more time explaining concepts during every touch-base call than you may have planned.
3. Status calls
Some people dread standing meetings, but they are essential for project management. And they don’t have to be pointless.
It is beneficial to have some structure and consistency for the project or it falls apart.
Make sure you have an agenda ready to go ahead of time for each meeting so that the client knows what to expect on the call.
And then take only as much time as you need. Make sure that everyone gets their concerns or questions answered, their next steps laid out, etc. After the call, you can send notes from the meeting, so it is documented, and everyone has a record.
4. One-off emails
Have you ever received an email from a service provider with a helpful note just because they thought it would be of value to you? Remember the impact that left? It’s these little touches that can go a long way in strengthening your client relationships.
Think about how you can touch base with your client outside your regularly scheduled meetings. Maybe something in the SEO industry happened that pertains to your client. Or maybe something in their industry happened that could impact their SEO.
Send a quick email to give them the details, why it matters and how it might impact them.
5. In-house resources
Any time you create a useful resource that your client might benefit from, send it to them. Think ebooks, webinars, videos — really, any content marketing asset.
Sure, you could send out an email blast to all your clients with a link to that ebook you did. But a more personal touch would be to send it to select clients that are struggling with the issue in the ebook along with a personal note.
6. Progress reporting
A more official client-communications must-have is your SEO reports.
Make sure you have a schedule for when and how you will report progress. And make sure the client knows when to expect that. For example, it might look something like this:
Often: Update the client on progress on agreed tasks between calls.
Monthly: Generate a report that shows progress for the month. We usually run this in 4-week sprints.
Quarterly: Create a report that shows quarterly wins and concerns and quarter-over-quarter progress.
Project end: Create a summary with an overview of the project that includes wins, losses and next steps.
Yearly: When you have long-term clients, show year-end progress and year-over-year success.
7. Client feedback
At some point during the engagement, give your SEO clients an opportunity to give feedback on how they feel the project is going, what’s working, what’s not working and how you can improve.
If it feels like you’ll only get honest feedback if it’s done anonymously, then send out a survey to your clients and make their answers anonymous. This is the format for an NPS score.
You might do this at regular intervals during the engagement (recommended), or you might wait until the end of the project. What you learn from this feedback can be built into your client engagements moving forward.
8. Your blog
Make sure your clients know about your blog! Better yet, ask if you can add them to the subscriber list when they first engage.
It’s not uncommon for clients to never visit your company blog and miss that amazing resource for them. Once they’ve subscribed, your blog updates serve as an easy touchpoint to help keep your brand top of mind.
So, make this a resource that you are sure your clients know about.
Use communications to uplevel your service
According to PMI, high performers create formal communications plans for nearly twice as many projects. In your SEO project management, take the time to review your communication plan to incorporate as many touchpoints as possible.
The latest version of the AIOSEO (All in One SEO) WordPress plugin (4.1.9) adds integration with Microsoft Clarity. Clarity is Microsoft’s free analytics tool that provides insights into on-site user behavior.
Clarity’s dashboard shows a visual overview of user behavior. Then you can dive deeper into heatmaps (to see where users interact most often and how far they scroll) and session recordings (to see mouse movements, clicks, taps and scrolls for all users, across pages and devices).
If you don’t have one already, you’ll be prompted to create a Clarity project.
Fill in your details.
Copy and paste your Clarity tracking code.
Click Save.
It will take Clarity a couple of hours to gather data.
Why we care. This integration of Microsoft Clarity and AIOSEO will give you more analytics data to see what users actually do on your site. Search engines want to reward websites that provide a good user experience with better rankings. So use this information to help identify areas where you can improve and optimize your website to provide a better overall user experience (reducing bounce rate, optimizing content, adjusting design elements, improving conversion rates, etc.).
Google recently released its Performance Max campaigns enabling businesses to advertise their ads across all of Google’s channels (Search, Display, Gmail, Maps, Discovery, YouTube, etc.) instead of creating specialized ads for each channel.
However, as with any automated advertising platform, it’s best to oversee and guide the overall strategic direction to ensure campaign success.
Join paid search experts from Adthena to learn three ways to boost your Google Performance Max campaigns to ensure they deliver real business results.
Was the meta description for this article written by Google? Or a human editor at Search Engine Land?
You can’t tell, can you? That’s how far machine learning has come. Read on the learn the “shocking” truth.
Auto-generating content summaries. Earlier this year, Google started automatically generating content summaries for Docs users. Google explains the technology behind how it works in this blog post if you want to dive into the natural language understanding (NLU) and natural language generation (NLG) of it all.
In short, based on the text of your document, Google will suggest a summary for you. You can choose to use the summary if it looks good to you, or you can edit the summary to be more to your liking.
This was interesting news because if there’s one thing I know from editing for 20+ years, it’s that people – even some great content writers – have a hard time condensing 1,000+ words into one or two short sentences or ideas that are optimized for search and act as a teaser to entice clicks (without giving away everything).
Testing out Google Docs summaries. I was curious to see how good Google Docs is at generating summaries, so I looked at my five most recent articles.
In short, Google Docs is surprisingly good at generating summaries. It’s by no means 100% perfect – but it’s at a level you’d expect from Google. I’m sure you already have seen Google’s intelligence at work in Gmail, offering responses to an email or suggesting how you should finish a sentence as you’re writing it.
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Human: These tactics will result in fewer recommendations, less views and limited ranking. Learn how to avoid what Facebook considers watchbait.
Google: This article is about how to avoid watchbait in your videos. It’s important to know what Facebook considers watchbait and what you should do to avoid it.
Google’s is slightly long – and I’m not personally a fan of starting any meta description with “this article”. But this is pretty accurate. Swap “Learn” for “This article is about” and you’ve got a serviceable meta description. Thanks, Google.
Human: Many brands already know TikTok drives sales. TikTok search ads could help attract qualified traffic (and get valuable keyword data).
Google: This is a big deal. TikTok is testing search ads, and it’s a big opportunity for brands to attract qualified traffic.
This is probably the strongest summary of the bunch – the most “human” sounding. Also, it’s interesting that Google somehow determined this was a “big deal” because the words “big deal” never appear within the text.
Human: This data will help give you some bargaining power, whether you’re negotiating salary for a new role or seeking a raise from your employer.
Google: This survey looked at the median salaries for PPC specialists in the U.S. and the U.K. It was based on responses from 715 respondents.
This was easily the worst summary by Google. It’s boring. But more troubling: it’s inaccurate.
The survey itself didn’t look at only the median salaries. That’s just what I wrote about. Also, my article didn’t mention the UK, so I have no idea where it pulled that from. The survey actually was global.
So this one is a failure on Google’s part. The median salary issue is a “bigger context” issue that’s understandable – it can only output a summary based on what the author (me) has input. But the input/output theory wouldn’t explain the UK mention. That is just an oddball.
Human: Meta is consolidating its products into the Meta Advantage suite, which allows advertisers to automate part of a – or an entire – campaign.
Google: This is just a simple rebrand and making clear which of its products are automated. However, the company is also coming out with a shopping campaign later this year.
Again, not awesome, not terrible, and fairly accurate. With a few tweaks, you’d have a decent meta description.
Why we care. I use Google Docs all the time to write content. But never have I considered it a tool for SEO. Until now. If you struggle to write compelling meta descriptions (or excerpts or summaries) for your website content, simply hit the + button next to Summary in Google Docs. Those auto-generated summaries aren’t perfect, but it is generally a great “rough draft” that can help you write a compelling meta description.
And even if you don’t use the summary Google generates (e.g., because it’s inaccurate, long, or has some other issue), that may be a big hint that you need to give your content another, deeper review. (You may also consider asking a friend, your editor, or someone else to review it.) Does it actually say what you meant or want it to? Because if Google (Docs) can’t understand it, it’s quite possible that when it publishes, neither will Google (search).
Wait! Who wrote the meta description for this article? I did. Google’s was just too long:
“This is a big deal. Earlier this year, Google started automatically generating content summaries for Google Docs users. The idea is to help content writers write compelling meta descriptions for their website content.”
But good to know that Google Docs thinks that this technology is also a big deal.
Summary, take two. The above summary generated by Google was on my rough draft version. After making my final edits, I deleted the summary from Google Docs, curious to see if it would generate a new summary, based on my revisions. It did:
“This is a pretty interesting technology that’s making its way into Google Docs. Google Docs automatically generates content summaries for you. I tested it out with five articles I’ve recently written and it was surprisingly good.”
First problem: too long. Second problem: the technology is already in Google Docs. If we delete the first sentence, it’s good.
And that seems to be the overall pattern for these auto-generated Google Docs summaries: good, but not great.
So, yes, Google Docs can help you write your meta descriptions, but more as a first attempt. Don’t expect Google Docs to generate a great meta description for you (you may have as much luck with a million monkeys banging on keyboards – eventually one of them is bound to produce a meta description worthy of Shakespeare). For now, anyway, human review, analysis, intuition and creativity are still essential job requirements.
First, you walk. Then you run. What if, instead, you learned to dance?
While Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a key strategy today, going forward, B2B marketers will take a more holistic view. More of a dance than a race, marketing is evolving to look at the entire lifecycle and how to care for the customer relationship at each phase. Driven by this holistic approach, Forrester proclaims in its New Tech: Account-Based Marketing Q1, 2022 report that “the term Account-Based Marketing will disappear by 2025 as B2B organizations focus on the entire customer lifecycle.”
As part of this evolution: Buying Group Marketing (BGM). While ABM blankets your key accounts with messaging, BGM targets the specific people involved in purchase decisions at your key accounts. It does this through carefully crafted buying group personas and delivering custom campaigns to buying team members. It’s a person-based marketing approach versus an account-based one. BGM is about relationship building – externally and internally.
While that sounds great, the devil is in the details.
One of the keys to implementing a successful BGM strategy requires a fundamental paradigm shift in how you market. As Forrester reinforces in the New Tech report, “sales and marketing must come together to identify and prioritize buying groups for effective ABM.”
A lead isn’t something to be tossed over the wall at the MQL stage for sales to run with. Employing a BGM strategy, requires marketing and sales to work together at every stage of the customer lifecycle from awareness to deal and beyond.
If your marketing and sales alignment has looked more like a tussle than a dance in the past, it’s time to streamline your moves into elegant choreography. Here’s how you and sales can ditch your two left feet and learn to dance well together.
How BGM sales-marketing alignment works
Let’s set the scene with an example from the movie Dirty Dancing.
In this 80s classic, there is a scene where Baby (the main character) is learning to dance the Mambo with Johnny (the dance instructor). His usual partner, Penny is on the sidelines and can see that Baby is struggling to learn the steps. So, Penny steps in and guides Baby from behind while Johnny leads. And the three of them move together in fluid unison to the music until Baby gets the moves down and learns the dance.
How does this relate to Buying Group Marketing?
In an effective BGM strategy, Johnny represents the sales team, Penny represents the marketing team, and Baby is the prospect. Marketing and sales work together to guide the prospect into finding the right steps and rhythm that will help them succeed.
This is a fundamental shift in how sales and marketing has traditionally worked together. With BGM, marketing is no longer stuck on one side (or in Dirty Dancing… the corner) of the MQL wall but involved in all the stages of the process. Because of this, each department needs to know the steps and be able to dance together first. Then they can bring the prospect in and teach them to dance, too.
5 Steps to improve your marketing and sales alignment
Below are five key areas to help you improve your marketing and sales alignment for an effective BGM strategy:
1. Align goals and operations
To ensure that your funnel is unified, sales and marketing must have common goals and a common bench of metrics that deliver insights for continuous improvement. One of the first steps in the process is coming together to develop this operational backbone and to create service-level agreements, defining the goals and the lead management process from the top of the funnel to the bottom.
2. Share your data
Sales and marketing teams need to have access to all the same data and insights around contacts and accounts at the same time. This will prevent missteps and ensure that everything that is created is of value to your prospects and enhances their journey.
3. Orchestrate your messaging
Because the messaging in BGM is more highly targeted to buying group members, it’s important to team up and work through your air-cover narratives and carefully orchestrate them. The focus should be consistent messaging that is on-target for every successive stage of the funnel with the end goal of generating value for the buying team member.
4. Align your platform structure
Synergy across sales and marketing starts with your systems. The platforms that you choose to use for BGM, whether a CRM, marketing automation or sales engagement tool, should be engineered to share data, processes, messaging, goals and metrics.
5. Communicate continually
To execute a BGM strategy well, you will need to design a feedback loop between the sales and marketing organizations for regular communications regarding pain points and successes and for developing mechanisms to test and learn. Content is king, but context is everything because your data is shared. There should be an open communication loop to adjust campaigns for the context of the prospect along the way.
How a BGM approach helped a B2B industrial workforce platform close more deals
One B2B platform whose business is to digitize the industrial workforce took a Buying Group Marketing approach, using top-of-the-funnel advertising to close more deals.
This organization had a highly specialized audience that was particularly difficult to reach. While marketing did bring in some viable leads, the organization’s existing solution (that was based upon reverse IP look-up) was insufficient to produce high-quality leads. The result was nearly non-existent lead follow up by the sales team. The lack of follow up led to a strained relationship between sales and marketing.
There needed to be better alignment within the two teams and a more granular approach to marketing efforts. To do this, the marketing team used sales’ data to create highly customized advertising campaigns using Influ2.
Sales were delighted with the results, receiving immediate notifications about engagement on the ads from the contacts they had been trying to reach. They were also appreciative of the context-driven insights and lead prioritization that marketing was now able to deliver. And what started as a pilot was expanded globally.
Taking this approach helped the marketing and sales teams better collaborate. They defined the processes, determined the appropriate infrastructure, orchestrated their messaging, and openly communicated with each other to improve the pipe and close more deals.
A meaningful competitive advantage with BGM
According to Forrester, “Many organizations have already evolved or are evolving processes and technologies to account for buying groups; those organizations have a meaningful competitive advantage over those who do not.”
Buying Group Marketing is here to stay. While there are many components involved in building an effective BGM strategy, marketing and sales alignment is among the most important. These five steps will help you get started with your BGM marketing-sales alignment.
Remember: not stepping on each other’s toes is great. But you can do much more. Learn to dance with your sales team and help your prospects achieve their lift!
This sponsored article was written by Nirosha Methananda, VP of marketing, Influ2.
Marketers, SEOs, employers, prospects, and even content strategists all have been taken in by content strategy myths they’ve heard or read and now believe.
Some people think that it’s all about coming up with new ideas for content. Others believe that it’s a one-time task.
But there’s a big difference between creating content for the sake of creating it and developing a content strategy that will help you achieve your short- and long-term business goals.
This article will debunk 15 content strategy myths that are flat wrong.
1. Content strategy means content marketing
Many people believe that content marketing and content strategy are the same. The term “content strategy” is often used interchangeably with content marketing.
Content strategy is about creating a plan for how you will produce and distribute content across your website and other channels.
But while the two fields share some common goals and tactics, there are important distinctions between them. While content marketing is essential, it’s only one part of a successful content strategy.
In short, content strategy is a plan, while content marketing is a part of that plan.
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A prospect questioned our content strategy services. Why? They believe content strategy is only a list of topics and keywords and don’t need any service provider. And we lost the lead.
Coming up with a list of topics and keywords is just one small part of creating a successful content strategy.
A content strategy would include (depending on the goals and targeted platform),
Segregated marketing goals to achieve business goals
What the overall marketing strategy looks like
Who you would target as your customers
Types of content and number of content you would need to create for respective marketing channel
Keyword research for each content targeting SEO and customer journey stages, if any
Briefs for content creators and designers
Content marketing process to distribute content
Content performance KPIs
A sample of what a content strategy’s first part would include apart from topics and keywords
So if you meet anyone saying the content strategy is about topics and keywords, show them this list and help them debunk their myth around content strategy.
3. You need content strategy only for blogs
This is another big misconception about content strategy most SEOs have, and I had that too, which got busted after a few years.
I used to create a content calendar to support SEO, which used to work well for my employer and clients. So I started believing that content strategy means a blog calendar.
This is how most SEOs or marketers manage blog calendars, including me (obviously in the past).
Eventually, when I started working on lead magnets to drive MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads), I had to plan everything from the different types of content to the amount of content we needed to plan, create, promote and track.
When it became about combining my content marketing efforts with content planning and using them across all the marketing channels, I realized content strategy is for blogs and every type of content we wish to push out for marketing purposes.
Your content strategy should include planning for every type of content – be it a blog, video, infographic or another content type or format.
4. Content strategy can only help in SEO
Most of the time, people thinking of content strategies are SEOs. Why? Because no content strategy is complete without a list of keywords.
Each piece of content we plan has at least some audiences searching for them on the search engines, branded or non-branded keywords.
For example, I wrote a Twitter thread on what you should write instead of “conclusion,” “wrapping up,” etc., in a blog.
Do you still write "Conclusion," "Wrapping Up," "Final Thoughts," and more while writing the end of your blog?
Though today, people would not be searching for this kind of topic. Tomorrow, it might have excellent search volume.
That’s why it’s easy to get into the trap of thinking content strategy is for SEO. But, it’s not limited to SEO.
Let’s look at how it can be for every marketing platform and not just for SEO.
Content calendar for email marketing segmented from overall content strategy
Similarly, here is the email content planner segmented from the overall content strategy
I’m not showcasing the social media content strategy because that’s what I’m going to cover in the below point.
5. Content strategy = social media content strategy
No. Content strategy is not equal to social media content strategy.
We have met and seen some marketers and business owners have this misconception, especially in the e-commerce domain, as they largely depend on social media for business.
When you talk about content strategy, it’s an overall plan that includes auditing, researching, planning, developing, executing, managing, distributing content and measuring its performance to achieve business and marketing goals.
A social media content strategy is a segmented part of the content strategy. Once you know what needs to be promoted on social media, why and how, you can prepare a social media content strategy to achieve what you’ve set for social media.
For one of our clients, we created a calendar targeting different audiences for different platforms because they have the targets to achieve for both audiences.
While creating their social media content strategy, we separated the messaging, timings, designs, and goals, considering the audiences active on the respective platforms.
One part of the calendar targeted the Talent audience on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, who would sign up on their platform to seek remote jobs.
Another part of the social media calendar targeted the Companies as the audience on LinkedIn who would sign up on their platform to seek remote talent.
For such detailed social media content strategy creation, you need social media strategists or marketers who would take care of this. But, you cannot have social media strategists create the overall content strategy targeting holistic marketing goals.
If you still have this myth around content strategy, you would hire the wrong talent, ultimately impacting your ROI.
6. The content strategy emphasizes creation
Content strategy is not content marketing; it’s certainly not content creation.
While working as a consultant, whenever I used to ask the marketing teams to develop a content strategy, they would share with me a list of topics to be written and all information around it.
Honestly, it’s also about content distribution. Here is what your content strategy’s content marketing/distribution section should look like,
Content creation is a part of the content strategy. But if the emphasis of your content strategy is only on creation, you’re missing out on generating content ROI.
7. Content strategy is not for my business
I discovered this content strategy myth while conversing with e-commerce and SaaS founders.
During the discovery calls with SaaS prospects, we go through a detailed understanding of their audience, product, and business model. They don’t know what their product should be called most of the time. Let me tell you why.
They could be startups trying to solve a problem. If they are solving a unique problem, their product would also be unique and even challenging to be attached with an existing keyword having a decent search volume.
For example:
We offer a CRM, but our product is not limited to customer relationship management but much more than that for the BFSI industry.
Sales enablement automation is what we focus on.
Our product is a sales acceleration platform.
We offer a sales playbook.
And the list is endless.
So they don’t feel the need for a content strategy as they want to create content only for the bottom funnel of the customer journey. Well, even if you target conversions, you need a content strategy.
If you create conversion-focused content without the proper distribution process, creating that content is a wasted effort.
Some niche e-commerce businesses wrongly think investing in content strategy is a waste of money. It isn’t. But you’re wasting money if you’re creating content without direction.
The content strategy gives direction to what you want to achieve – why, when and how.
The more niche you go, the more you need a content strategy as you need detailed research on how you’re going to bring your audience into the customer journey and convert.
8. Content strategy is one-and-done
Any successful website is the result of a content strategy.
This is especially true for sites looking to rank well in search engines or generate leads and sales through any marketing channel.
Your site will likely struggle to attract visitors and achieve its goals without planning what kind of content to create and how to promote it.
Unfortunately, too many businesses treat content strategy as a one-time task. They develop a plan, implement it, and then move on to other things. I would call it not just the myth but even the mistake you make around content strategy.
If you want your site to continue performing well, you need to keep your content strategy going indefinitely. If you lose track, you might have to invest more to achieve marketing goals, resulting in low profits.
9. Content strategy is only about the short-term
Yes, a content strategy involves thinking about the short-term. But that’s not all it’s about.
A good content strategy is also about understanding what your audience needs, taking into account the whole customer journey, from first contact to post-purchase follow-up and then giving it to them in a way that’s engaging and easy to consume.
By thinking about your content in this way, you can create a more holistic and practical approach that will benefit your business in the short and long term.
It’s clear why so many people are confused about content strategy. I have met employers and prospects who think – “what’s in a content strategy? I don’t need someone specialized for that.”
10. Content strategy? SEO can handle it
SEOs are the perfect people because they understand how search engines work and what users are looking for.
SEOs are uniquely qualified to handle both tasks simultaneously. But SEOs also have more complex things to look at, such as,
Increasing competition
Technical challenges of the website
Google rewriting title tags
Maintaining E-A-T
Keeping their website safe from the Google algorithms coming every month
Moving from Universal Analytics to GA4
Google indexing issues
And more
Honestly, creating a content strategy is a huge task because the one who creates it has to consider business goals, marketing goals, and segmented marketing goals to be achieved through the power of content at the right time, right place with the right marketing message.
Miss this and you’re wasting resources on content strategy and marketing.
11. Content strategists only create calendars
That’s a big misconception business owners have for content strategists.
They are often thought of as just calendar planners. While that is a significant part of the job, there is so much more to what they do.
In reality, their role extends far beyond simply putting dates on a calendar and making sure things get published on time.
Content strategists help brands create a plan for their content that aligns with their overall business goals and establishes a strategy for achieving them. They think about the audience they are trying to reach and develop formats and topics that will resonate with them.
They also ensure that all of their content is aligned with the overall marketing strategy, helping to drive traffic, leads, and sales.
This may include auditing the existing content, creating or sourcing content, ensuring it is designed per the expectations, optimizing it for search engines and social media, tracking how well it performs, and making notes for the next planning round.
12. The content strategist must be in-house
Some businesses have said this to me and came back to me when I launched my agency.
Content strategists can be in-house but don’t necessarily have to be. Whether to have them in-house or outsource them, you need to think of the following,
What type of business are you in?
Do you have huge marketing goals and budgets?
Are you looking to set up the entire marketing team in-house?
How big is your in-house marketing team?
Are you able to find the right talent?
Do you have time to do a trial-and-error with a content strategist?
The answer to the above questions would help you understand when to hire a content strategist in-house or outsource it.
13. Content writers should build content strategies
“Can you come up with content topics as well?” I’m sure most freelance content writers often receive this kind of requirement, as I also used to get it before my agency.
The thought of a content writer coming up with a content strategy may sound like a good idea, but it’s not. Here’s why:
A content writer writes articles, blog posts, web copy, etc. A content strategist is responsible for planning, creating, and managing all types of content (text, visual, audio, etc.) to meet the specific needs of their company or client.
Content writers are great at creating interesting and informative pieces that help businesses achieve their goals, but that’s usually where their skill set ends unless they are content strategists already.
A true content strategist has a deep understanding of the bigger picture of marketing and how each piece of content fits into the puzzle.
So, stop having this myth that content writers can create content strategies and stop asking them to do so. It will impact your business.
14. You can automate content strategy creation
WHAT? HOW?
I mean, today, everyone in marketing thinks of automation. But content strategy? Certainly not.
Some tools and techniques automate a lot of content strategy activities to streamline your efforts, such as:
Content ideation through the search engines, competitors, People Also Ask, BuzzSumo, Quora, etc.
Content creation through AI using Jasper, Copy.ai, Rytr, etc.
Keyword clustering with Keyword Insights tool and some Python scripts.
Content distribution such as email marketing, social media marketing, programmatic ads, and more.
Google Sheets formulas to automate many mundane tasks while documenting the strategy.
But, you still cannot automate some tasks while creating a content strategy, and they are:
Understanding the audience
Defining the brand guidelines
Identifying the marketing messaging for each content
Selecting the type of content and distribution platform considering the audience, their customer journey stage
Creating content briefs
Reviewing content and ensuring it’s as per the expectations
Auditing the existing content for gaps
And more
Content is at the heart of any effective marketing campaign and requires a human touch to create and optimize effectively. So, you cannot automate content strategy creation. Stay away from such a myth.
15. Measuring content strategy performance is impossible
“It’s easy to track the performance of the content but not of its strategy. How would we know if we have hired the right content strategist with no performance tracking?”
Business owners looking to hire content strategists for the first time always think they cannot track the performance of the content strategy and hence, don’t know if their content strategists would do any good. And that’s another big content strategy myth.
If your content is driving results, your content strategy is working.
After all, the content strategy had the content topics, goals, marketing message, platforms, timing, and distribution process that made it drive results.
So, if you want to measure the performance of the content strategy, think of comparing the results of your content with the previous period and see how you’re progressing.
Don’t let your myths around content strategy affect your marketing ROI
The purpose behind highlighting these myths is to create awareness around content strategy, which it lacks.
We all know that content is king, but you need the right approach, strategy, and talent to make your content king.
And these myths are the roadblocks to content coronation. Hopefully, now that these content strategy myths have been debunked, you now have clarity about content strategy.
