Marketing News 002 - TikTok surpasses Google, AR & VR in e-Commerce, Voice Search, Zero Party Data & Facebook’s triple threat.

Marketing News 002 – TikTok surpasses Google, AR & VR in e-Commerce, Voice Search, Zero Party Data & Facebook’s triple threat.

Martin Henley 0:04
Hello there, my name is Martin Henley, this is the Effective Marketing YouTube channel and excitingly, this is episode number two of Effective Marketing News. It occurred to me when I spoke to Ionut Danifeld last year that lots of marketers are spending lots of time looking for news and I thought if we were to do that for you, then that would save you some time, some energy and leave you with more time to be effective with your marketing. I am joined for this second episode by Ionut Danifeld, here he is. Good morning, Ionut.

Ionut Danifeld 0:39
Here I am. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Martin.

Martin Henley 0:42
Happy New Year, brother. How are you doing?

Ionut Danifeld 0:45
Good. I just received some interesting news to start the year, I need to brag a little bit about myself. It’s okay, can I do it now? Okay. I’m one of the CMOS to watch in 2022. So you see how important I am in your show.

Martin Henley 1:01
Okay, but who said you are one of the CMOS to watch in 2022, was it your Mum?

Ionut Danifeld 1:09
The CMO Alliance.

Martin Henley 1:10
Well okay. So that does count how many people are in the CMO Alliance? If it’s only three, it doesn’t count.

Ionut Danifeld 1:18
966

Martin Henley 1:19
Ah, and how many people are on the list of CMO’s to watch in 2022?

Ionut Danifeld 1:26
I think seven or 10. Okay, good.

Martin Henley 1:29
All right. Good. Okay, then I’m impressed. It’s not your Mum, there’s not only three people in the Alliance, and there’s only seven people on the list. Congratulations, Ionut. Not me, No, I’m not a CMO. It’s not me. No. Congratulations. Yeah. Good. If we’re talking about you, let’s talk about you a little bit. You had a good year last year, didn’t you appear on the same bill as Barack Obama in some conference?

Unknown Speaker 1:55
The Reshape Conference, yeah, it was actually an amazing year. It’s, it’s been a year of, I would say, personal branding and growth for Trapo, the company that I’m working with, for, for the ones that don’t know, we are in the automotive space, are one of the big players in car accessories in Southeast Asia and we have seen a tremendous growth and I think that more amazing things to do in 2022

Martin Henley 2:25
It feels like it, it feels weird in a in a way because you’ve kind of improved your personal brand by going to work for a corporation.

Unknown Speaker 2:39
I wouldn’t say corporate, I wouldn’t say Corporation. I’m laughing all the time with the guy, the moment that his company is transformed into a corporation, I’m going to quit. I think they gave me a platform to grow. I think that’s the best word possible. The platform to grow, especially in a pandemic. I mean, who the fuck is buying the product that is used on the go? Meaning like a car mat, car accessory? The entire country is locked down, the entire world is in a lockdown, and we try to reinvent ourselves?

Martin Henley 3:12
Good and you have. What I’m saying is okay, so maybe it’s not a corporation yet. I think it could be a corporation at some point in the future, maybe. It’s kind of counterintuitive to think that you would improve your personal brand, by going to work for a company, by getting a job, you know, as opposed to being your own boss, flying solo. Okay, good. Well done. Ionut have we spent enough time blowing smoke up your?

Ionut Danifeld 3:36
My direction? Yes. And your direction,

Martin Henley 3:41
Excellent. And so we’re here to talk about the news. So what makes this interesting a little bit is that we’re kind of on a mission to find three news stories each. I don’t know what you’re bringing, you don’t know what I’m bringing. So there is a little bit of jeopardy here. It’s tremendously exciting. Let’s kick off with the news. So what has caught your attention in the last … it’s kind of three weeks since we did one, we’re going to do this fortnightly? I think is the plan. You’ve committed to do seven, this is number two, so there’s five more, so there’ll be 10 more weeks after this. What’s caught your attention

Ionut Danifeld 4:19
So shall I say all of them in one go and after this we kind of like dissect and go one by one?

Martin Henley 4:25
You can say all of them in one go and then afterwards we will dissect. Yeah, that’s okay.

What’s in the marketing news?

Ionut Danifeld 4:31
Okay, so my three areas of interest, we are going to speak for mostly a minute, kind of like solely in the direction of E commerce because that’s basically what we’re doing and that’s my interest, augmented reality and virtual reality, so AR and VR.

Martin Henley 4:52
Excellent.

Ionut Danifeld 4:53
But that’s one. The second one is the increase of voice Search.

Martin Henley 4:57
Good.

Ionut Danifeld 5:00
The last one, I think that we touched a little bit in the first episode is zero party data, but it’s becoming a subject that everybody’s talking about

Martin Henley 5:09
Zero party data. Good, I’m gonna learn something then. So this is aligned with the data wars that are going on and I think are going to rage especially in 2022. Is that right?

Martin Henley 5:25
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You’re plus you’re always learning something when talking to me. I mean, yeah.

Martin Henley 5:32
Yeah, always learning something cool. We had some feedback from the first one, we did the review of 2021 back in December, somebody came out and they’ve produced new line in their business, which is a social media calendar, but it’s the thing that you print on the wall. It includes all the national days, it includes all the days of interest, blah, blah, you know, what people do on social media? Is this day amazing? Your particular input into that business is it also includes now the single days that we spoke about in December. So there you go, we are we are influencers brother, we are influencers.

Ionut Danifeld 6:10
My dream came true to become influencers, what influencer? What can I say?

Martin Henley 6:14
What can you say? Okay, good. Right. So my three stories, I’ve actually got four or five stories, but they’re kind of themed, a little bit like yours are themed. So I think the thing that I am interested to speak about is; I’ve got these windows open; TikTok overtakes Google as the most popular site on the planet, I think that’s worthy of discussion. The second, there’s 1 2 3 4 stories, but it’s one theme. So the first is, the lawsuits that are aiming to break up Meta, or Facebook or whatever we call it, in the States are going ahead, they’ve been approved, apparently, it can go to court. Google and Facebook are both facing record fines in France, so that’s interesting. The second story is about Starling Bank, I don’t know if you saw this, Starling bank withdrew all paid advertising on Facebook back in December and so that’s interesting; now they’re coming out in January and saying it hasn’t made a jot of difference to their business. So that’s interesting. The third story in this trilogy is Facebook drops 36 places in Glassdoors, annual best places to work list. So the two stories, the first one is TikTok overtaking Google, what does that mean? Then the second one, kind of three stories around this, is the triple threat that Facebook or Meta seems to be facing? Is it going to fail because it’s coming under increased pressure from governments? Is it going to fail just because it’s not doing a particularly good job for advertisers? Or is it going to fail because people don’t want to work there anymore. So that’s my 4, 3, 2 ish stories that I want to talk about. What do you think about that?

Unknown Speaker 8:14
Yeah, it’s all good. Especially on the one from TikTok that is passing, which one you said Google?

Martin Henley 8:23
Overtaking Google. Yeah. So shall we start there?

Ionut Danifeld 8:27
Yeah, sure.

TikTok Surpasses Google as the most popular site on the internet.

Martin Henley 8:28
Okay, so we’ll start with me first. Okay. So this has been reported widely. This is in The Independent. So what they’re saying is that TikTok has dethroned Google to become the world’s most visited website, new data has revealed the viral video app ended the search giant dominance, which had seen it rank as the most popular domain for all of 2020 and the first part of 2021. So, so that’s happening, apparently, what do we think? Do we believe it to start with?

Unknown Speaker 9:02
I actually believe it. Even if it’s hard to believe, but actually I believe it from one single aspect. I’m actually a huge fan of TikTok for a couple of reasons. I think that TikTok, the algorithm is straight to the point. I don’t know if you’re on TikTok, but basically, the more that you like, the more that you watch that specific video is going to curate really awesomely well the next video that you’re going to see after a while, right?

Martin Henley 9:36
Yes.

Ionut Danifeld 9:37
And why I think that is also brilliant is that it’s a little bit of it’s a new platform, right? Yes, even say, I mean, like compared with Facebook, Instagram, yada, yada, yada, it’s quite new. Not so many ads. So people are attracted to that. The content is UGC, user generated content.

Martin Henley 9:59
Yep.

Ionut Danifeld 10:00
Brands, the organic reach that the brands are getting is much higher than any other platform because of course they want to get traction. We’ve seen some tremendous results from TikTok, we can use what we’ve been doing. I posted a video that wasn’t promising and generated like 9000 likes or hearts or whatever the hell they call it in TikTok. The new generation is actually really liking it, especially the baby boomers or how you call all of this generation, because the baby

Martin Henley 10:41
Boomers are people who were born in the 40s and 50s brother.

Martin Henley 10:45
So people generation, whichever generation is latest. That.

Martin Henley 10:49
I think there’s an X, I think there’s a Z, I think there’s millennials. So I think the youngest are generation Z. I don’t know.

Unknown Speaker 10:57
Okay, yeah. So I’m talking about the the latest ones, they like to be on it. They like to generate content to go viral. They really like to, basically to be on a platform, but where parents are not on, a platform which is becoming a Mama’s platform a little bit like Facebook, right? So I totally, I totally believe it. It’s quite unique. The content reminds me a little bit … do you remember the platform Vine? Yeah, the social network Vine?

Martin Henley 11:27
Yes.

Martin Henley 11:27
Is basically kind of like the same principle.

Martin Henley 11:30
Okay, so this is interesting, then, isn’t it? Because Vine spawned careers like the Paul brothers came out of Vine, and what’s the name? Liza Koshi came out of vine. It spawned a whole generation of YouTube’s superstars. Okay, so what interests me then is, is three things about this. So is it probably, to keep it relevant or to start at the most relevant point, is it any good for marketers? When you and I spoke whenever that was like a year ago, you were failing to find value, but now you say that you are. So that’s question number one. Question number two is, is it good for the world, society? lt’s coming under criticism, for providing a platform for underage girls to sexualize themselves, etc, etc, etc. It is very sticky. I don’t want to use the word addictive but you know what I mean, people are spending an inordinate amount of time there. And thirdly, is it, how’s it gonna stand up? Because now we have Instagram reels, we have YouTube shorts, we have all of these things, everybody is piling into the same space. Before we talk about that, I wonder how they’re calculating this because if it’s time spent on the platform, that’s one thing because when people go to google.com they put in their search and they’re not on the page any longer. If it’s number of visits, then I just can’t believe that this is true because everybody opens up the internet, and they go immediately to Google. There’s four things.

Ionut Danifeld 11:30
Okay, so let’s take it with the ones that I remember. The first one, if it’s relevant for, for companies, or for marketers to actually to be on TikTok? I would say definitely, I see a mistake, most of the time, that companies or brands , I’m talking about the small ones, startups or ecommerce businesses. They feel that okay, I’m fine on a single platform we’re trying to put together the basket of eggs in only one basket, which I think that is a mistake. You’re absolutely right. In the beginning, we couldn’t find the recipe of success. What we actually did, and my mistake was, and I think that is really important to state out, my mistake in this process, it’s not only about successes, also about failures, I realised that we were copying content. TikTok is a very unique platform. In order to grow on that platform, you need to use the following. You need to use popular songs, songs that are actually viral. You’re going to see the same video created in different ways but using the same sound the algorithm is triggering the sound. So that’s one of the things that we did, we were using the wrong sound. Short is really important. Using the fun factor is another one, it’s not necessarily product centric, but more action based.

Ionut Danifeld 13:14
So what I mean by that is not necessarily using product selling, it’s not about hard selling, but it’s about using it in a fun way, your product Right? So if I would put it in the funnel, I would put it, probably I will put it in the top funnel, not in the low in the bottom funnel. So top funnel is better brand awareness, mid funnel is adding to cart and bottom funnel is purchases. So it’s purely on brand awareness.

Martin Henley 15:18
Yeah.

Ionut Danifeld 15:20
So this is the recipe of success. When we started, I know that it’s a little bit weird to say, but when we started to copy viral videos using our products, but then we found the recipe of success,

Martin Henley 15:32
Okay, good. That’s kind of the way I am seeing it and understanding it is there’s an originality, there’s a borrowed originality kind of aspect to this, where everyone is using the same sounds, they’re using the same themes. They’re using the same ideas, but everyone’s bringing a little bit of their own thing to it, I think that’s what makes it so compelling. 100%. I think you’re right, and I think this has been the case for social media, you know, not all social media, maybe LinkedIn is a little bit more direct and dealing with a different place in the funnel, as you put it, but I think social media is typically about brand awareness, awareness. You know, I think that’s what it does for your business. I think that’s cool. Okay, so relevant now to marketers. The second thing is, is it good for society? Is it good for the well being of these people who are on this platform?

Ionut Danifeld 16:26
I think that’s a complicated question. I can tell you that I’m following bimbos on social media on TikTok that are basically making me laugh, muttering, falling down. So for example, cleaning the ocean wasn’t a bad project to the one, is it cleaning the ocean? Ocean plus, yeah, it’s various, massive projects, they’re trying to clean the entire ocean. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Anywat it depends how you’re using the product or the platform and depends what are your interests? I learned a lot about marketing from TikTok, because that’s basically what the algorithm is showing me. I learned a lot about Crypto, because that’s basically what my learning algorithm is telling me. I learned about a lot about e-Commerce from different influencers, TikTokers. I learned a lot about finance. So what I’m basically trying to say is, well, it depends what are you actually interested in? If it’s doing good for the humanity? Once again, depends what you’re searching and what are your interests?

Martin Henley 17:34
Okay and that’s what you were saying to me before, in one of our conversations, that the algorithm is really good. When you show an interest in something, then it’s really good at giving you more of that thing? I know that this is taking up an ordinate amount of my time, like, it’s almost like social where social media was where Facebook was in 2013 2014, where you get on it and you are there for half an hour, 45 minutes or an hour, and a lot of time passes. So that was the third thing then which is, you know, are they going to withstand the challenge from the other platforms, which are all piling in Facebook? Is it Facebook Stories, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels. Everyone has just piled into the same space.

Ionut Danifeld 18:25
I saw recently, last year, if I’m not mistaken, around October or November, there was a statement from the CEO of Instagram put out a video, it’s quite interesting for you to watch. Saying that Instagram is no longer, shouldn’t be any longer a photo sharing platform. Yes, see, and he used specifically, it should be more like TikTok video centric.

Martin Henley 18:52
Yeah.

Ionut Danifeld 18:53
Which I found really interesting, that the CEO of Instagram is actually mentioning the name and trying to copy Tik Tok, a new platform. We can take the example from Snapchat where Facebook wanted to buy Snapchat in the end of the day they started to copy it and the popularity of Snapchat went down but it still exists, it’s still popular in the communities in for example. In the US there is going to be a threat but my gut feeling is telling me that is around to stay

Martin Henley 19:31
Yeah, I think so as well. Mass media hate it. You know, they’re talking about the fact that it’s Chinese owned, that saying that it’s like about, you know, all the things that they say I suppose. Okay, good. All right. So that’s interesting news story number one. So let’s go to your first news story.

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality driving conversions in e-Commerce.

Ionut Danifeld 19:55
Yeah, so I was reading recently your Last week, a report regarding tops, top 10 trends reshaping the way that we shop in 2022 and the first thing that came out was AR and VR. Augmented reality and virtual reality. I’m just going to read a small paragraph from the news. So it was saying that according to the Digital Commerce 360 2021 analysis of the sites visited data 13% of the 100, top retailers in the digital commerce 360 have a VR or AR capabilities on there e-Commerce sites and their apps. Many brands have achieved great performance since implementing these solutions, the example given here, a couple of companies, they’re saying but one of the companies, I never heard about it, but 10th Street, has increased their conversion rate by 115% and revenue by 110%. I remember a couple of examples, for example, even IKEA, which is probably the brand that everybody knows, has VR capabilities, has an AR capability, where you do your entire bedroom in AR and see how the chair or cabinet is looking in New York.

Martin Henley 21:33
Right.

Martin Henley 21:35
So it made me think how can we use it? The discussion is more about companies and ecommerce companies finding new ways to increase conversions, AR is gaining popularity, more and more. VR is getting more and more popularity because of all of this Metavere and technology is getting a little bit better with Oculus and other solutions like that. Why I find it really interesting VR and AR Because is you’re breaking, buying a product online is never going to be the same experience as buying a product offline, where you basically touch it, feel it. Technology, it’s definitely making it simpler for you to visualise to understand the look and feel. To give you an example of what we wanted to do in our company, we want to do VR, sorry, AR with the car mat, where you basically manipulate it and you place it in the current car is giving you a little bit of copying and how he’s looking, and the 3d modelling. So that for me is a new so the question that it goes back to. Because you’ve been in this space for a really long time in marketing space do you see that entrepreneurs or business owners should embark in these new trends, which are VR and AR? And I’m going to speak after this on voice search.

Martin Henley 23:08
Okay, so I think about that I think about online sales in the last two years, it’s obviously, it’s just gone crazy, because lots of people have been stuck at home with no other way to buy and they are still buying. The other thing, I think is that now we have vaccine passports and stuff, people aren’t able to get to the shops necessarily, if they don’t have those things. So I think people are being forced even further, you know, more online spend. I always worry about these trends, because I always worry about these trends. in articles that come out at the beginning of the year because for me, nothing really changes.

Martin Henley 23:46
So really, AR and VR is just about the quality of your content, you should have been investing in the quality of your content all the way through if you want to be satisfying Google. So what do I think? I think it’s really I think VR is really interesting, actually frightening because Elon Musk, I saw the other day was saying that the next step in technology is not putting TVs on people’s noses, he’s talking about putting chips in people’s heads by the end of the year. So that is, you know, that goes to another level, Scary, scary level. So what are the two, virtual reality and augmented reality, augmented reality? I’ve seen really, really useful applications of augmented reality but not even recently, like six, seven years ago, people were doing this really well. So for example, there were estate agents in London, who had a plot of land, and they would essentially give you an augmented reality view. So you could essentially walk around your potential apartment when you’re just in a field you know, you can look in one direction see where the new nearest tube station is, look in another direction, see where the new nearest grocery store is, etc, etc, etc. So I don’t think its very new. My issue with this trends type stuff is it’s very rarely new news, you know, this has been going on forever but I absolutely think 100% If you’re in E commerce, you should be investing in the quality, and the usability, and the functionality of your content. I don’t, personally, I’m not a great fan or believer in VR, so I wouldn’t go in that direction. But augmented reality is just a really cool way of demonstrating, like you say the look, but not necessarily the feel. I’ve got an issue now, I need to buy a squash racket but I’m in Indonesia, where squash isn’t a huge thing. My only option is to buy a squash racket online, but I can’t buy a squash racket online, you know, I have to feel it, I have to hit a ball with it. I have to. So I think there’s a limit to these things is what I’m saying. I would say personally, augmented reality is really cool, really fun. There’s really creative ways of using that. VR, I think you’re going to such a specific market that aren’t actually going to be in the real world for much longer. If the Metaverse is to be believed they’re going to be plugged into that 24/7 buying virtual things in, in, never Neverland.

Unknown Speaker 26:15
So there are two things that I would like to comment regarding what you said. One, is that AR Yes, it’s kind of like old news, somehow every year it’s popping up, which I tend to agree with you. We need to take in consideration in a few years, the internet, the speed of internet was not actually bad. You need to be a little bit of a visionary to say that 5g is going to, in a couple of years, is going to take over. We already see 5g in different countries. With high speed internet, these kinds of technologies are going to be more accessible and more user friendly.

Martin Henley 26:59
Yeah.

Martin Henley 27:02
Regarding virtual reality, with all of his Metaverse is where basically companies that are here you probably seen the Nike but basically embarked into this NFT and Metaverse, and you have people that are creating shopping malls in Metaverse, and you have real life architects that are building houses and defining buildings in the Metaverse, so you need to be a little bit with the trend and the beginning of the trends to basically to be one of the first. Yeah, so that’s, that’s a little bit of what I wanted to say. I mean, that’s definitely for me a journey, do a little bit of AB testing. Something that we’ve been doing and is one of my visions, I really like to do AB testing, don’t invest a huge amount of money in something that you don’t know if it’s working, start small and build it up to that. So if you have like to give you an example, if you have like a shop with 10,000 SK Codes, build one of the products, test it out now with now with Facebook, you can basically integrate AR ads, you can create AR ads, which is basically kind of like a next step. The technology existed also last year. So there are ways to promote this kind of technology and to see if it’s working and if it’s working is catching up. Of course it depends on the market, depends on the product. I did like your example of the Squash racket, some products, you need to feel it, some products you will necessarily need to fill it. But it’s good to test it out.

Martin Henley 28:51
The thing is, I don’t know if it’s wishful thinking or it’s negligence on my part. I think it’s wishful thinking, I really hope these distractions NFTs, and Virtual Reality just remain that, a distraction. I’d prefer to be much more focused on the real world and I really hope that we continue as a race, as the human race to be focused on the real world. I really think these things are distractions. I really do think they are

Ionut Danifeld 29:29
Depends. I mean, I Hollywood but it only depends.

Martin Henley 29:33
Yeah, and the thing is, yeah, what you would say is Crypto. The thing is crypto is relevant because so many believe in it and so many are investing, so many are benefiting from investing in it and the same might eventually become true for NFTs and it might become true for the Metaverse but I hope it doesn’t you know. That’s why I said I really like the world. Something that makes me laugh when you’re saying you can completely create your room in in the Metaverse, you could just take off the goggles and look at your room, you know, you could just go outside and see the blue skies and smell the flowers. You know, that, for me, is much more interesting and valuable.

Ionut Danifeld 30:21
Listen the technology, in my opinion, is just at the beginning, probably the same people, said exactly the same thing regarding the automobile in the beginning because it was lower than the horse.

Martin Henley 30:34
They said it will give you brain diseases. I think. about the train and automobile.

Ionut Danifeld 30:38
Exactly. Yeah.

Martin Henley 30:40
Yeah. The internet, the internet, the email, email as email. Everybody was used to sending posts, email, and how many emails are sent every second now? It’s going to be a wonderful space to watch in the next couple of years.

Martin Henley 31:00
Okay, we need to have a conversation about, not this time, but maybe in the future about, what are they calling it fake intelligence? Augmented intelligence?

Ionut Danifeld 31:13
AI?

Ionut Danifeld 31:16
Okay, what are they calling it? AI? Yeah, we need to have a conversation on that, because I’m really quite worried about that and I don’t think it’s gonna make the world better. Okay, good. All right. So we’re talking about the metaverse, so then let’s do if we’re done with that story, are we done with that story? I think essentially, my recommendation would be invest in the quality of your content, I think that will, providing you have an audience who are actually going to see the content, invest in the quality of your content. Augmented reality is really cool. You can be really creative and fun with that. Virtual reality. Yeah, test. But virtual reality for me, much less interesting, much less exciting. But hey, whoa, if your markets there, if you are selling to teenage boys aged between 11 and 68, or whatever age these these boys are, who are on virtual reality, then maybe you should also be testing that. I think that’s cool. Right?

US antitrust case against Meta and record breaking fines for Google and Facebook in France.

Martin Henley 32:12
So we’re talking about the metaverse taking over the world. I think that maybe this year, Facebook is gonna actually be in real trouble. So in France, Google and Facebook hit with $238 million fines over privacy violations. So 150 million for Facebook 60 million for 150 million Euros for Facebook, 60 million Euros for Google. If they don’t sort themselves out, it’s gonna be 100,000 Euros a day, I think. In the States, what they’re saying is that the competition watchdog can proceed with a breakup lawsuit against Facebook’s owner federal judges ruled. So Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp had asked a court to dismiss an antitrust complaint bought by the Federal Trade Commission. For the second time, however, Judge James Boasberg, said on Tuesday that the FTC is advised that lawsuit should be allowed to proceed.

Martin Henley 33:11
So I tell you, what I think about this is I think that probably something should happen. A little bit like Brexit, maybe it was a good idea for the UK not to be in the European Union but actually extricating themselves was always going to be fucking impossible. So I think it’s a little bit like that, it’s probably a good idea that there is some kind of de monopolisation, around Facebook, and these other platforms. The thing that strikes me in these two stories is that the government is probably the least equipped to do this. Honestly, what difference does 150 million euros and 60 million euros make to Facebook, or to Google? You know, they are making billions of dollars a day. So this isn’t even registering as a percentage. If they don’t behave themselves, they’re going to be fined 100,000 Euros a day. Honestly, that’s not even a blink. So I think government’s inability to understand the scale of these things, makes them really poorly equipped to actually do the work of making sure that these things are managed, are not too big to be successful, because they’re already too big. You know, they’re bigger than government’s already. What do you think?

Ionut Danifeld 34:31
I want to go on your on your statement that you you gave governments are not equipped. I think governments are really ,you probably, everyone’s seen the the statement in the recording from Mark Zuckerberg to compare, again, the commission of understanding the privacy when they had all of all of this privacy issue. They don’t understand how ads are working, they don’t understand what a cookie is, they don’t understand how to do targeted ads, they don’t understand all of our social media, all of his social media. So for me, it’s a fucking joke this state department is asking all of these questions. So that’s one second the fold. I, I’m a little bit puzzled because it feels to me that yes, monopoly is definitely not good. A little bit like what we discussed earlier regarding TikTok, I’m really happy that another platform is came out to Facebook and YouTube. They don’t have any more monopoly on social media content and there is an alternative. My problem is it feels to me that every time that you arrive on a certain level of popularity, somehow people were trying to break it down.

Martin Henley 36:06
I do see.

Ionut Danifeld 36:08
Frustrating.

Martin Henley 36:11
Yeah, I think the thing is, for me, is that this is going beyond, it’s not because they’re jealous. I do think that Facebook, and these other huge platforms represent a risk. I think they have too much influence about the way people are understanding the world, politics, all of these things. That’s what I think. I do think that they represent a threat. I just think that governments are … I presented for the European, to the European Union. It’s not as grand as it sounds, it was like a small division in Malta, about the threat of these platforms and as part of that, I read out the, you know, the thing that you have to accept, the licence agreement, you have to accept to be a user. It’s actually horrifying what’s in there, and was in there, and this was in 2014, or 2015. The horse has bolted. These corporations are way bigger than any of these governments, even the government of the United States. They are in every country in the world. If you think about them in state terms, they have a population of 2 billion Facebook. They are the most populous organisation on the planet, and they are driving the way people think. Governments, and this is a joke, what is 100,000 Euros a day to Zuckerberg who’s worth whatever it is $80 billion, you know, it’s not even, it’s, it’s not even an inconvenience, it’s like, it would just take that money, you know, who cares?

Ionut Danifeld 37:53
Listen, I’m going to be I’m going probably to say something that I’m going to have a lot of hate. I don’t believe in fucking privacy these days. Why I’m saying this, because you’re on all of these fucking platforms, you’re on Facebook, you’re on Google, you’re on Yahoo, you’re on YouTube and you basically accepted the terms and conditions. That means that your data is not private. In Malaysia we have an app in order to deal with this pandemic, which is called My Sujata, you need to scan everywhere you go, it’s basically tracking everywhere, right? So you have all you have now all of this apps for COVID. I don’t want to go again into the COVID discussion. So I don’t believe in privacy in 2021, I didn’t believe, I don’t believe in privacy in 2022. I believe that our data is my name and my email address. My user behaviour is basically taking but all by all of this websites about like, basically subscribe. What I’m really frustrated about is the breach in my privacy. What I mean by that, I don’t have any fucking problem that Facebook or Google has my data and knows what I’m doing, because at the end of the day, there is no way to hide it and you don’t want to, you basically have a device, your phone, in your pocket that is basically tracking you everywhere. Right? You cannot tell me that. privacy is a concern. I really love people, but oh my god, the privacy, my data, and yada yada yada it shoots. It makes me love this conversation. What for me is really frustrating and where the government’s should put in a little bit of effort is how, if all of these companies have data, how they can secure it against data breaches. What I mean by that is hackers. The entire problem with Facebook, with Analyticala or what was the name of the company, that’s basically my problem. If you control my data, if Google or Facebook has my data how you assure me as a user, I, I’m I’m I’m 100% secure, that I know that my data is basically not going to arrive in the hands of X or Y or Z.

Martin Henley 40:16
Yeah, yeah. I think the issue with that, though, is that people who are concerned about these things think that probably Google and Facebook are the worst people to have your data, they’re going to misuse it to a fuller extent than any hacker or fraudster or scammer might. For me, the thing is different. So the thing for me is the way, this is also a rabbit hole that I don’t want to go into today, the way that these corporations are influencing the way people think, and that for me is really dangerous. Clearly, you know, it’s the extremes that get the clicks, you know. No-one wants to see a middle of the road piece about anything, everyone wants to see hate this, hate that. This person should be cancelled. That person got cancelled. Yeah, so. So that’s the danger is that it’s driving, I think, it’s driving anxiety in a lot of situations, and that is clearly not good for the world. Okay, anyway, we’re gonna come back to Facebook, and the three ways that Facebook might fail in 2022. So your second story.

What will be the impact of zero party data?

Ionut Danifeld 41:32
My second story is on, funnily enough, I think that we have, we have a nice little zero party data, zero party data. So yeah, so what I mean by zero party data is this cookieless world that we are living in, it’s basically regarding iOS 15. So with privacy changes to the iOS 15, and first party data, cookies data, you can no longer target people. That has created a huge impact for ecommerce businesses and what is happening in the E commerce world. On Facebook, if you want to do advertising on Facebook, you have only eight events that you need to prioritise, it’s no longer taking cookies, but it’s taking data from your website in order to do the marketing, email the entire thing that is happening with Apple, but you basically cannot. If you’re using an Apple device. Professional, we are here at Effective Marketing, we are really professional.

Martin Henley 42:50
Sorry, somebody is really trying to get hold of me. Um, okay, good. You can carry on.

Ionut Danifeld 42:56
Yeah. So what’s happening also with what’s happening also with Apple, that you basically cannot, if I if I don’t disclose the data, it’s no longer, open rate is one of the KPIs that you should consider in 2022, now it’s the click through rate have. That’s something that is really important. So we already made changes. I can no longer retarget you. So it’s a question about, how can you build direct relationships with your audience and collect that first party data? So there are a few ways that you can do it. Okay, before before going to that, the ways for the companies. Do you actually it’s coming back? It’s the discussion that we have previously. Previously. regarding privacy, how important is privacy? And Facebook is cracking. It’s major hits from Apple. It seems that Apple is kind of like a trendsetter with data and privacy. What’s your opinion regarding that?

Martin Henley 44:13
Okay, so I think like, we’re not here to let people know the ways around these things necessarily. So we don’t need to get into that we’re kind of already about 50 minutes in. So we are actually already 45 minutes in so we don’t need to go into those details. Maybe we can in future if we prioritise that. I think it’s not about, we touched on this in December when we spoke, I don’t think it’s about the protection of individuals data. I think it’s about the value of the data and these corporations are seeing that, Apple are upstream of Facebook because Apple have the device so Apple can limit the amount of data that Facebook gets, so they’re going to do it because there’s a commercial benefit. In doing that. I don’t think it’s about the protection of people’s data. I don’t, like you said, I think the horse has bolted with data. I am still shocked occasionally. Last week I did. Last year, I did some work with a telco, they were telling me about the, the kind of data, the kind of view that they have of people using their network, which is basically they see absolutely everything, to the point where they can set up triggers if people visit a particular website. So I think you’re right, the data thing has gone. The data horse has bolted and I think this is purely commercial. If I were going to make a prediction for 2022, my prediction will be that Apple will bring out their own advertising service. Yeah. 100%. That’s what this is about. It’s not about the protection of individuals, it’s not making you feel better about the fact of you’re being tracked, or you’re not being tracked. There’s a commercial imperative here, which is everyone knows the huge value of this data and so these corporations, of course, are in the business now of, of managing that. You know, that’s, that’s what Yeah.

Ionut Danifeld 46:17
Yeah. But at the end of the day, I think that our since we are doing this, I even don’t know how to call it interview, news, whatever it is and since it’s called effective marketing, the question goes back how marketers can be.

Martin Henley 46:35
Okay, can you do it in 2 minutes? If you can do it in two minutes you can do?

Ionut Danifeld 46:40
I can do it. Okay, wonderful. So few things, I think better only three things, the magical number, speak directly to your audience, and retarget via emails, integrate quizzes and collect additional first party data. Use, for example, I think that email is going to be something that is really going to be important, even if click through rate is something that is changed from the open rate and another thing I think that is really important. we’re going a little bit back to the origin, which is SEO, meaning like, organic traffic rather than paid ads and that’s basically what I wanted to say,

Martin Henley 47:25
Good. You did that in a minute. I think you’re absolutely right. I think what, what people need, what marketers need to focus on is actually owning the customer, owning that relationship. Otherwise, like we said in December that the danger is that you invest in having a customer that you don’t actually have, and they are owned, either by the platform, the retail platform, or the social media platform, or whatever it is. I think it’s interesting because the data is going away and I think as digital marketers, we’ve been drunk on the data for the last 10 years and now we’re going to have to do something else.

Starling Bank shuns Facebook over scam ads and doesn’t see a noticeable decline in results.

Martin Henley 48:05
This leads quite into, quite nicely, my next story if that’s if we’re done with the zero data thing. Yes. Okay, good. So my next story is about Starling Bank. So Starling Bank shuns Facebook over scam ads, British challenger, do you know Starling bank. They’re like a Revolut kind of a service, they’re a challenger bank. British challenger bank Starling has stopped all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram because it says people are losing money to fraudsters posting scammer ads on the platforms. We want to protect our customers and our brand integrity said Starling Bank CEO and founder Anne Boden. We can no longer pay to advertise on a platform alongside scammers who are going after the savings of our customers and those of other banks. In December, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta said it would follow Google in only accepting financial services ads, if the advertiser has been authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority, or if certain exemptions apply. This is good news said Boden adding that until something similar takes effect, we’ve stopped all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Martin Henley 49:14
So this goes to kind of what you were saying about the data breach. What’s interesting now is that this happened in December in January, they’re coming out and saying Starling Bank, Facebook boycott has caused no noticeable decline in marketing performance. Starling Bank stopped advertising on Facebook and Instagram in December to protect its customers and said last week, it would not reverse the decision until Meta cracks down on financial fraudsters using its platforms. We’ll keep an, obviously, keep an eye on it. But at the moment, we’re pretty comfortable that it hasn’t caused a noticeable decline Starling Bank’s brand director Rachel Caroni tells marketing week. In fact, December saw the FinTech business hit it’s highest ever brand awareness level she claims with a score 71. We’ve gone from being a startup to being a high growth company. As you go through those different parts of your journey, different marketing channels work better than others, she explains, for the first couple of years, we were very reliant on digital advertising because we weren’t doing any TV. Now we’ve turned that around and certainly for the last two to three years, we’ve focused on a lot of those above the line channels.

Martin Henley 50:23
So this is interesting to me. Because it’s what we all know about, they’re failing to protect consumers, you know, in this instance, from actual fraud, which is actually damaging and then when put when people stop using it, they find out that they don’t miss it. So the challenge now for Facebook, and I think all of these platforms is what if you know, the data element is going away that the laser targeting is going away? What if they are just much, much less effective, then we all have been led to believe? And maybe this is the thing that actually damages these platforms, what do you think?

Ionut Danifeld 51:06
What I think that is, I had two days ago, I have a meeting with somebody that used to be the head of marketing for one of the airlines company, I don’t want to give the name. In 2019 airlines were making billions of dollars, next month pandemic hits, making zero money, right. What they basically did, they started to close all of the ads on Google, especially on the brand name, because we didn’t believe I mean, like nobody cares about flying, you know, like in a pandemic. He wanted to put an article online and immediately the CEO of the company received a phone call from Google saying like, can you please not put, can you please ask your guy not to put the article online? Because we believe that other airlines company are going to follow and we are going to close their ads.

Martin Henley 52:15
Yeah.

Ionut Danifeld 52:16
Which is, which is quite interesting, right, which is quite, quite interesting. And there is a question if you should be done your own keywords, if you’re big enough, if it’s working? I think that’s a really interesting story. I think that’s certainly tell him he, I think that it’s creating a little bit of a media storm for this, for this bank, for sure people are going to follow it and we’re going to read about it. If you asked me, if we’re going to come back on promoting the service, I definitely believe that we’re going to do it. It’s impossible these days not to do ads. I think that you touched a really important subject, similar to what I was saying. It that’s creating kind of like a trend in wealth vertical of the industry and other big players are going to follow then that’s a threat fact for all of these companies that are basically living from advertising on Google and Facebook.

Martin Henley 53:08
Yes. And the thing is, I think what, I think about this is I had a really interesting conversation, the Talk Marketing thing I did, I had a conversation with Barnaby Wynter about this, this week and he’s talking about this being the fraud of broadcast media which is you advertise to the whole world but only a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of those people are actually going to end up buying from you. So there is huge waste in that. I think the issue for these platforms, not just Facebook, but also Google is that they all they always want to drive more and more and more sales. So they drive they they do drive you to advertise to less and less and less or less targeted audiences. That is the shame of them. So when I teach Google ads, for example, I teach people to get stupidly targeted, so that there is no waste. Are you still there? Did you stop moving? Did you freeze? You just froze? Yes, yeah. So I think maybe these platforms are less effective than we’ve been led to believe. And I think certainly when the data element goes away, they’re going to be less effective again, I think this is going to be a threat to their business model and is going to cause marketers to think about exactly how they use them, and why they use them, and how they can use them more efficiently. You’re back.

Ionut Danifeld 54:34
I’m back. Yes, you’re working on?

Martin Henley 54:37
Yes, it’s okay. We’re good. So that’s what I think. I think the world’s gonna realise that these platforms are actually much less effective than we’ve been led to believe and people will start to use them in a much more considered way, and efficient way. Hopefully that’s, that’s my hope. Go to your third story.

Is 2022 the year that voice search actually starts working and will it be any good?

Martin Henley 54:59
My first story is super quick, because we are already right on time. My, my last one was Voice Search. Voice Search is another 2022 ecommerce trend that brands and retailers shouldn’t ignore, powered by artificial intelligence, AI. Voice recognition, voice search allows customers to shop products using a voice assistant like Cortana, Apple, Siri, Google and so on. I found this really interesting according to PwC, 80% of the consumers who have shopped using Voice Search are satisfied with the technology. According to a market research firm, is saying that it predicts by ecommerce transaction values via search Voice Search assistant will reach $19.4 billion in 2023, rising from $4.7 billion in 2021. So that’s basically, again, you probably see that I like trends, and I’d like to embark on trends. Number one is basically Voice Search.

Martin Henley 56:14
So voice search has been on the trends for the last five years that I’ve known about, you know, so this is coming has been coming. You won’t be surprised to hear that I’m a little bit sceptical, because, you know, I upload these videos to YouTube, and YouTube does the transcription and basically, weirdly, it’s always the keywords that they they fuck up completely, you know. So it’s interesting, I suspect, it’s really exciting and really clever, but probably not as good as it needs to be to be really effective. I think probably $19.4 billion of sales is nothing in terms of sales if you look at globally, what’s going on in terms of sales, do you know I mean, so that’s kind of what I think. I don’t know what you think.

Ionut Danifeld 56:59
I, what I basically think that consumers are getting lazy, more and more lazy and lazy, and the popularity of voice assistants we are becoming a little bit smarter than a couple of years ago, it’s not going to be for everyone. There is a company that is called Jason, really recommend for everyone to search it out, search it out and they are one of the biggest players for the e-Commerce in order to integrate voice search in your e-Commerce it’s going to work for kind of like a linear consumer journey. It’s not going to be for the ones that want this variation or that variationyada, yada, yada? It depends a lot on the market that you are in voice search is really, really popular in countries like US, UK, etc. Yeah. Consumers are starting to buy via voice search. Once again, stop being the grandparents and understand that people and technology is moving in a way, right? Yeah. So that’s what I think,

Martin Henley 58:07
Okay, good. I’m not being a grandpa. Elon Musk came out and said that it’s the input is the interface will be the next big breakthrough in terms of digital technology. The fact that we have to type everything is just appalling. Is just ridiculously slow. That’s absolutely fine. So 100%. Where I am being a grandpa is when people send me voice messages on WhatsApp, or Facebook or wherever it is that that that really freaks me out and does my head in and I’ll be a grandpa, that is ridiculous. That to me is akin to passing notes around the classroom. That’s what that feels like. So I am a grandpa, they’re. 100% when this works, it will of course revolutionise it. What do we do as marketers, we don’t do anything different, you know, we make sure that we are promoting the right keywords, in the right ways and then we hope that when Google comes and transcribes, or whatever the opposite of transcribing is, where it makes that text into audio, it gets it right, so that people when they do voice searches, which is well, why wouldn’t they buy, they’re searching, you know, so there’s not really a difference, a voice search or text search, they’re just searching. Clearly as marketers, what we need to do is make sure we’ve optimised our text so that when they come and make it into audio that Google understands then we will rank and we will be found by those people. Those searchers.

Ionut Danifeld 59:41
So what I think that the for me is really important is that voice search is actually affecting SEO. Right. So to give you an example, I was reading on Neil Patel website now, if you type in when you type you type restaurants near me, but when you do voice you do what are some good restaurants in my local area? So you see there is a difference in tone of voice. So I think that the way that you write your content on the website should have that human or consideration for Voice Search, because at the end of the day voice search is basically curating what your website, the website,

Ionut Danifeld 1:00:21
So it will be nuanced, necessarily. I mean, it’s just these people like whispering into their phones all the time. It’s like, okay, maybe if they’ve got their headset on, it’s okay. So that will be interesting. We won’t know that that’s the case until we see the data. But I don’t know if Neil Patel is presenting data. What’s the thing about that? The thing is, have we been consistent? Like we do the searches? Have we been conditioned to search in a certain way so that when we come and do it by voice we carry that convention or do we go back to the more human convention. You’re always gonna make me smile when you tell me that we have to consider that human element when we are engaging with computers. You’re always gonna make me smile.

Ionut Danifeld 1:01:06
You’re doing it so.

Facebook drops 36 places in Glassdoors annual best places to work list.

Martin Henley 1:01:09
Good. So we go to my last story, this isn’t doesn’t even need too much time at all. Facebook drops 36 places in Glassdoors annual best places to work. It is still in position number 47. So it’s down from number 11.

Ionut Danifeld 1:01:29
This is amazing. It cuts twice.

Martin Henley 1:01:32
So Facebook, parent Meta dropped 36 spots on Glassdoors annual ranking of the best places to work in the US falling from number 11 to 47 in a year marked by major public relations crises. I just remember back to when you and I met, there was some kudos to being employed by Facebook, or YouTube, or Google or any of these companies. I just feel like it might have lost its shine a little bit in the last six years. So there are 46 better places to work now than Facebook. Even though somebody told me recently that a starting salary at Facebook is like 250,000 US dollars a year, there are still 46 places better than Facebook to work. So maybe this will see the end of Facebook if people don’t actually want to work there anymore.

Ionut Danifeld 1:02:25
Money is always going to speak. I personally couldn’t give two fucks if Glassdoor is saying this regarding Facebook. Yes, it’s right. Facebook, YouTube, Google. I remember like 10 years ago, it was like the Mecca if you work for Google, it was ranked number one. You see all of this amazing restaurants in campus of Google and blah, blah but startups are kind of implementing the same thing. Honestly, I couldn’t give two fucks regular Facebook is to, in my opinion, Facebook or Meta, doesn’t matter how you want to call it, is still too big to fail, in my opinion. I’m not going to change my opinion. People are still going to work for Google, all of these companies like Apple and Facebook and Google and Tesla, we are basically changing engineers and developers and everybody’s following the route of money. Whoever’s paying more is who they are going to work for. It’s fine.

Martin Henley 1:03:31
Okay, good. Um, I just think it’s interesting. I just think it’s going to be an interesting year for … were due a change is what I’m seeing, hoping and I think this is going to be an interesting year, a more interesting year than we’ve had for these these monolithic corporations that are at the cornerstone of marketing, you know, that’s what I think

Martin Henley 1:03:58
What I think is that definitely companies are changing with of the pandemic. The companies that are going to be really popular on Glassdoor or places that you want to work out the ones that are giving you the flexibility to work from home because employees they tasted a little bit the advantage of working from home they definitely don’t want to come back to the to the physical location benefits. I was reading something by the way regarding the news I was really surprised you know, Evergree the company, the transportation company, yeah. Evergreen Taiwan paid all of the employees last year so because of last year, but they paid it in January. Anything between 30 minimum 30 months of salary bonus and the executive received 80 months of salary bonus check that out read without fucking fascinating 80 months once again eight zero 80 months of salary bonus.

Martin Henley 1:05:03
Yeah, you see what we’re not talking about, which is good, because I don’t want to talk about it is really the backdrop to all of this is going to be the outcome that, you know, 2022 is going to be the economy, it’s going to be the state of the pandemic, it’s gonna be about where people want to work, how they want to work, why they want to work, you know, I think that is going to be probably the biggest determinant of what kind of year 2022 is. I’m optimistic because I know this couple of guys who are doing like a marketing news type thing so at least I’m kind of optimistic that I’ll know what’s important and what I should do about it.

Martin Henley 1:05:46
Good, okay, so that has been the effective marketing news. We’re gonna do this every couple of weeks. Is that cool Ionut?

Martin Henley 1:05:52
Yeah, that’s cool.

Martin Henley 1:05:53
You’ve committed to five more. Okay, brilliant. So I will see you in two weeks time. Thank you so much for your time. Have a good couple of weeks. I’ll see you at the end of the month. Isn’t it was the 27th it will be around that time. Yeah. I love you brother. Thanks, man. Enjoy your day. Bye bye.

 

 

 

 

Martin Henley

Martin Henley

Martin has built a reputation for having a no nonsense approach to sales and marketing and for motivating audiences with his wit, energy, enthusiasm and his own brand of audience participation. Martin’s original content is based on his very current experience of running effective marketing initiatives for his customers and the feedback from Effective Marketing’s successful and popular marketing workshops.

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