Welcome back to our monthly marketing news round-up! You’ve officially made it through March which means it’s been over a year since we first opened 25 new fatBuzz offices…sort of.
In many ways, marketing is back to business as usual, perhaps with a more digital slant than last year. If you’d like a really strange experience, take a look back at our news round-up from March 2020 to see how far we’ve come!
After a quick reflection on that, read on to find out the latest in marketing this month.
What’s Happening in the Marketing Industry?
Search Goes Mobile First:
If you want to be ranked on Google you now NEED to have a mobile version of your site, as they dropped all desktop indexing. Now it is only the mobile version that will be used to consider your search results ranking. Desktop content will be completely ignored by Google’s bots.
Marketing Takeaway: If you’ve been focused on SEO for desktop, this could mean a big change in your strategy. You should review your mobile experience, make sure that it accurately reflects the content you want to rank for.
If you experienced a drop in your search rankings in March, this is likely why. With some tweaks such as improving loading speeds for mobile, you can work to get your SEO back up to scratch.
KidStagram:
People under 13 are not supposed to be on Instagram, – though it’s a difficult thing to police. Instagram is now looking into creating Kid’s only version of the app for people under the age of 13.
Recently the app has been looking at ways to combat predatory behaviours towards young people on the app, and ‘Kidstagram’ is one possibility.
Marketing Takeaway: Well, there’s not a lot of detail about what will be allowed on that platform yet. If they still allow advertising (they probably will, let’s be honest, but it may have some added restrictions), it might be a great place to advertise if your product or service is for the 13 & under market.
Insta Stories Drafts:
Right now, you can only post stories in the moment, living up to the ‘instant’ part of the Instagram portmanteau. However, Instagram is currently working on the ability to save a draft of your story, allowing users to create now but post later.
Marketing Takeaway: This ability is already available in the feed and is useful for planning posts in advance. Consider working more review time into your creative process now that you can save stories in drafts.
Campaigns We’ve Loved
Virtual Easter Egg Hunt with Cadbury
While people were unable to join together for an in-person easter egg hunt, Cadbury found a way to take it virtual. They enabled people to hide virtual eggs (for free) that family members could search for via Google Maps. Hints were added to help narrow down the search.
People also had the option, for £10, to have a real Cadbury Egg delivered to people so the experience wouldn’t be *purely* virtual. Even in a non-pandemic year, this is a great idea for helping families that live in different areas feel more together for the spring holiday.
Marketing Takeaway: Even a year into the pandemic brands are finding fun new ways to take things into the virtual space. Realistically, even once all restrictions are lifted, virtual promotions are a great space to keep investing in.
Even if the virtual-only option generated no revenue for Cadbury, the egg hunt was a great way to increase brand awareness and create goodwill capital among consumers.
NHS & Snapchat Organ Donation Campaign
You may or may not have heard that Scotland’s organ donation laws have changed to be opt-out instead of opt-in. This means everyone is assumed to be an organ donor unless they have specified otherwise.
Outside of Scotland, other UK NHS groups are also thinking about how to raise more awareness about Organ Donation and get more people to take part in it.
One campaign they’ve launched is using AR filters on snapchat to educate people about what organs can be donated and why it is important to donate.
Marketing Takeaway: Augmented Reality and filters are a really under-utilised tool. Finding ways to make a campaign interactive is also a great way to really make the message stick.
Given that Snapchat, Instagram already have options for sponsored filters, maybe someone needs to start talking with Zoom about new sponsored filtering ideas…you heard it here first.
That’s our recap of what was happening in marketing last month!
If you’ve been finding it hard to keep up with all the platform changes while trying to put out ads as good as these, then perhaps we can be of assistance! Get in touch today to find out how the fatBuzz Marketing Team can help with your campaign strategy.