🗞️ Headlines from 2023.01.31
Livestream Shopping Tip
Modern Retail has a piece up on how a DTC brand is using QVC (yes, it still exists!) to grow its audience. The approach could prove useful on other livestream shopping platforms, or really just content in general.
The episodes themselves follow QVC’s The Total Experience format rather than a direct selling approach and are up to about three minutes long. The format allows Agrawal to share more of her background, the brand’s story and the community behind the brand Sonder Club. For example, in one episode, Agrawal explained how customers can connect with Silk + Sonder users and gain access to Sonder Socials, which are special events and classes led by the company’s trained facilitators.
…
consumers also aren’t as easily influenced to buy items just based on static images. “We’re smarter than that now,” she said. “We want to see things in action. We don’t necessarily want to get in our car and drive to the store but we want the next best thing.”
And then there’s this:
According to a 2021 McKinsey report, livestream shopping generates conversion rates approaching 30% — up to 10 times higher than conventional e-commerce.
Goose Your Google Ads
When you launch a new Google Ads campaign—no matter how long your account or conversion tracking has been running—start with manual bidding.
This gives you more control while giving the algorithms their requisite time to learn. Once you hit at least 30 conversions you can return to the sweet embrace of automation.
Mo' Meta.
I missed a noteworthy bit in the piece about Reels and Facebook performance the other day:
Data gathered in the middle of the fourth quarter showed that time spent on [Facebook] was up worldwide, including in developed markets, over the course of a year.
Instagram Notes are going (more) global, which means the feature must be working. Some people are reporting way higher response rates when asking questions compared to asking via Stories.
Your phone’s battery life seem lackluster? Might be Meta’s fault. A document provided in a court case by a former employee details a negative testing program that intentionally drained batteries in order to monitor app and feature performance. (Remember, TikTok uses your battery state and performance in its algorithm.) (Fortune article, PDF of the document)
Just The Headlines
- Should your influencers be human - or virtual? / Virtual influencers make your brand stand out and make your products seem more innovative. (“Pro tip: related research found that virtual influencers are great at grabbing attention for your brand, but not so good at direct conversions to sales, because people struggle to relate with them.” (Probably applies beyond just avatars when it comes to AI))
- Elon Musk pushes forward with Twitter payments vision / Company has started applying for US state licences in bid for fresh revenues beyond advertising (this is also a step towards an “everything app,” but I’m not sure Elon can afford the interest payments until that vision starts to take shape.)
- Improved search for properties and accounts in Google Analytics 4 (you can now use that search bar I ignore in GA4 to access details about the current property's data stream(s) and settings or navigate to other GA4 properties (It's always fun when Big G remembers they're a search giant and might want to leverage that knowledge in their other products))
- SEO v Social Media: The 9 Big Differences & What Works Where [Infographic]
- Yahoo is making a return to search
- Can I have my PayPal balance automatically transfered to my bank? [Yes!] (I’m including this one because PayPal can freeze your funds for any reason they feel like or their algorithms hallucinate, so if you use it you should know this.)