Brian Meert's Blog, page 52

What is an Influencer, and What Can They Do For Your Marketing in 2022?

Everyone is talking about influencer marketing this year, but why is that? Well, influencers are projected to become even more important for businesses that want effective digital marketing in 2022. But what is an influencer’s role in marketing exactly, and why are they becoming so integral for serious sales and brand recognition?

In this article, we’ll cover all these questions and more so you know exactly what influencers can do for you, how to find the right one for your business, and important tips for hiring an influencer so you can ensure your collaboration is successful.

What is an influencer, and what do they do for marketing purposes?

Influencers are social media users who have a large social media following and can influence purchasing decisions. An influencer can be anyone ranging from celebrities, e-celebrities, content creators, models, or even casual users who accumulated a large audience over time. Influencers are sought out for promotional purposes because they have an established following of potential customers that trust their input on purchasing decisions and product recommendations.

An influencer’s social media reach is measured by the number of people that follow them, their engagement rate or comments per post, and their previous successes promoting products and brands. The ratio between these factors regarding their importance for marketers has changed over time, which we’ll discuss later on.

Influencer marketing is a relatively new form of marketing involving social media influencers promoting products or services for an agreed fee and/or commission rate. Though technically new, it’s analogous to traditional marketing methods involving celebrity spokespeople and endorsements. It has proven to be an extremely successful form of marketing for businesses and lucrative for social media stars with a diversity of backgrounds and audiences.

What are some influencer platforms? What are the major social platforms for influencers?

Influencer marketing is mainly done on social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, but can be done through other social media platforms that influencers use regularly like Snapchat, Facebook, and more. The most well-known platforms for influencers are YouTube and Instagram, both of which are home to the common types of influencer marketing: beauty, makeup, and fitness.

That being said, TikTok is one of the fastest-growing platforms for influencers in terms of audience and opportunity, and over the past few years especially, more platforms with different tools and types of content have become competitive potential for influencers as well. This is especially true for 2020-era influencers, which tend to represent a larger variety of communities and interests than the previous two decades.

The increase in the number of social media platforms people use on average and the increasing variety of content and influencer types means that more often than not, an influencer will use more than one platform. Despite this, influencers generally have one specific platform they’re known for most where their audience and social reach are the largest.

How to find the right influencers for your business or brand

There are a few ways to go about finding and selecting an influencer to collaborate with your brand.

Ideally, your social media marketing should be established enough to know which platform(s) to start looking on. From there, it’s a matter of researching the communities, content, and hashtags your target audiences are in and inevitably influencers and their content will show up. This can also be done using the audiences of competing businesses on their social media accounts.

Finding influencers organically through audience research and engagement within their communities is the best way to find influencers that are a good fit for your brand because it allows you to discover influencers with a reach that encompasses your target audiences.

Alternatively, if you don’t have the time or resources available for this type of research, you can find influencers for your brand using professional services. Third-party platforms like BuzzSumo can help you search for relevant influencers on various platforms while taking your business’s social media account into consideration. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have their own suite of tools to help brands and influencers connect and collaborate on-site. This can be an inexpensive way for marketers and business owners to save time when finding and selecting an influencer, but they don’t make the process completely effortless and still require you to dedicate time to research.

Professional services for finding and hiring influencers

For those with larger teams and marketing budgets, hiring an agency can make finding an influencer fast and easy while minimizing risk.

Agents have enough experience in the industry to easily find quality influencers that can represent your brand’s products effectively and also take over the time-consuming tasks of outreach, vetting, and negotiation. For example, a brand working with a full-service TikTok ad agency or Instagram advertising agency for their marketing campaigns would only have to provide any preferences or requirements and give final approval after being presented with their best options – the agency can do the rest.

Depending on their success level, influencers often have their own agents to handle the tedious aspects of this process on their side. Influencers that are in high demand often receive numerous requests from hundreds of brands, so it’s important to know whether they have an agent handling brand sponsorships in order to know the most effective way to reach out to them with an offer.

What are the benefits of working with influencers?

As stated previously, influencers have established audiences in their sphere of influence and are often regarded highly by their fans. This results in a high level of authority and trustworthiness and makes influencers more likely to be effective at promoting your brand.

This trust is what puts the “influence” in the term “influencer,” and it helps them promote a product or service in a way that is authentic and natural, which ultimately results in better sales conversions. In other words, because an influencer’s audience trusts them to create content that they feel genuine about, audiences are more likely to take their advice and act on it, whether that’s purchasing your product or service or sharing the social media post with friends.

Another important benefit that influencers can have for brands is that they’re digitally native to the platforms they’re using. Creating organic and authentic content on social media requires a thorough understanding of the platform and its norms, trends, etc. and it can be difficult for businesses to keep up with social media in this way.

It’s not uncommon to see a brand try to speak the language of their social media audience in an ad or upload by tapping into a trend or popular topic, only for it to fail miserably. This is not only a waste of marketing resources but can also tarnish the brand’s reputation or even result in backlash on a large scale if their marketing fail goes viral for the wrong reasons.

Social media influencers can allow brands to avoid this risk and help unlock the advantage that authentic, platform-native content can give to boost brand reputation, sales, and customer loyalty. They often help brands that are new to social media or influencer marketing to come up with creative content ideas and new ways to promote their brand in a way audiences will love.

What kind of return on investment (ROI) can you expect from working with influencers in 2022 and beyond?

As social media advertising and social commerce become more common, influencer marketing is beginning to seem less like a novelty and more like an industry standard. Influencer marketing got an even bigger boost this past year as third-party data regulations and policy changes disrupted the effectiveness of digital ads.

Influencers can generate an impressive ROI for businesses sponsoring them, but the range is too large to give an accurate estimate. Each influencer is in a sense their own business with unique audience size, demographics, verticles, and so on. In other words, they’re too different to expect similar results from.

That being said, social media influencers generate over $9 billion in product sales annually and the industry has single-handedly launched emerging startups and small businesses into mainstream popularity.

Ask any avid YouTube viewer, for example, if they’ve heard of Dollar Shave Club, Hello Fresh, or Raid Shadow Legends. All of these businesses are recognizable names for most because the majority of their marketing is influencer marketing, predominately on YouTube.

In essence, a brand can expect massive payoffs from hiring an influencer, including ROI in the form of sales, signups, etc. But arguably, the ROI influencers provide is not easily quantifiable like conversions or likes. The reputation boost influencers can give businesses long-term can promote social credibility and social proof that will ultimately contribute greatly to the company’s overall market value.

How will the role of influencers change in the next decade, and how should businesses prepare for these changes?

The social media industry is constantly evolving and influencers follow suit. For example, social media platforms have recently started to offer advanced tools for both businesses and influencers to integrate into their content. For example, TikTok now has shippable live streams and links that make product promotion easy for brands, influencers, and buyers alike. Because of this, businesses should expect influencers to become more heavily involved in the representation and promotion of brands on social media.

Furthermore, affiliate marketing, particularly for Amazon stores, is on the rise. This has led to a new type of influencer called an Amazon affiliate or Amazon influencer. These influencers are social media personalities that promote products through their social platforms, in most cases pulling in commissions on the sales they generate for Amazon.

Since these influencers create their own private affiliate links to share with their social followers, many businesses and product owners often see a substantial increase in sales and conversions and influencers can easily receive commissions without nearly as much time and effort involved in collaboration and negotiation.

This is evolving the industry in two ways: Firstly, it allows smaller influencers to work with brands more often, providing them more opportunities to grow and businesses the opportunity to reach new, unique audiences. Secondly, it’s diversifying the intensity required for sponsorships, resulting in less expensive and formal types of promotions and shoutouts.

Potential dangers associated with using influencers as part of your marketing strategy

As the influencer marketing industry has become more mainstream, the risks involved in selecting an influencer are decreasing as the process becomes standardized. However, that’s not to say there’s no risk for businesses at all, which is why vetting and account auditing is an important part of the selection process.

Instagram is easily the platform where scammy or negligent influencer marketing is most likely to take place. This is partly because of the platform’s exploitability, and also because Instagram’s position as a founding platform for influencer marketing means that many still don’t treat the process as seriously as it has become. That’s not to say Instagram is the only platform with bad influencers or practices, or that most Instagram influencers are bad. Still, it’s a good example to highlight because of the platform’s well-documented and pervasive challenges with influencer marketing.

Exploitable metrics and inflatable numbers

Earlier we mentioned that the ratio of importance between an influencer’s follower count, engagement, and previous success has changed over time when determining their social reach. This is in large part because businesses learned the hard way that:

Lots of followers =! lots of engagement (and therefore less influence)Followers, like counts, etc. can be inflated with the use of bots and other malicious practices to make the influencer’s reach look larger than it really isThe context behind an influencer’s numbers matters when determining whether collaboration would be successfulNegligence and avoiding formal industry standards

As influencer marketing becomes more intertwined with marketing as a whole, new regulations and best practices are added regularly that influencers and brands alike need to be aware of. This has helped turn social media influence and content creation into a bonafide career, but many still avoid following them either out of ignorance, negligence, or for their own personal gain.

Failure to disclose sponsorships

On Instagram for example, influencers failing to properly disclose paid promotions is commonplace. Though this was always regarded as unethical, during the initial rise of influencers, no one was quite sure what its legal implications were. Nowadays, its legal implications are clear – both brands and influencers can face hefty fines and charges for doing so – but that hasn’t stopped many.

Influencers need to vet sponsors, too

Another common issue is the selectiveness of influencers regarding the products and brands they promote. Just as influencers can influence a brand’s reputation, the same is true in reverse; they can run into embarrassing or damaging scandals if they don’t do their due diligence as well. Some common examples are crypto scams and “detox” (read: violent laxative) teas or “weight loss” (read: useless and expensive) programs and pills.

Other times it’s not the product itself that’s the issue but the way in which an influencer promoted it, or the fact that they promoted it. Plenty of influencers with younger audiences can find themselves in hot water when they promote age-inappropriate products, for example.

Others have received massive backlash for promoting cheap products in a misleading manner. Once-famous YouTuber Tana Mongeau, for example, was well-known for accepting bad promotions. One notable instance was when she promoted Kensa Cosmetics makeup brushes. They were marketed as originally $60+ but at a special discount, so viewers only had to pay the shipping fee. They turned out to be ~$0.10 per brush on Alibaba (slightly less than Kensa’s shipping fee, coincidentally). Tana’s audience consisted mostly of young preteen or teen girls, who are far less likely to question a deal their favorite storytime teller is raving about. Legend has it that some are still waiting for their brushes to arrive to this day.

These examples of bad influencer practices are important to know about and identify early on to ensure your investments are safe and your brand reputation isn’t put at risk. However, as stated previously, the industry is a lot more regulated and formal than even just a few years ago, so these issues are fading away over time and audiences are also learning to avoid them.

How you can ensure your relationship with influencers remains positive and mutually beneficial

To make sure that your relationship with any influencer your brand partners with and sponsors, be sure to keep the following in mind:

Always do your due diligence

This is the most important thing that you can always be sure to remember and abide by – proper vetting and research often only takes time, but not doing so can be costly when it backfires. Take your time researching social media influencers, their content, social engagement rates, and get an idea of their audience. Consider auditing their profile for fake followers and potentially illegal activities like failure to disclose promotions or any of the bad practices we outlined above.

Be transparent about what you expect from the influencer and why you chose them

The biggest mistake brands make when working with social media influencers is not being completely forthright and open about what they expect from the influencer and what makes them a good fit for their brand. This could be as simple as a specific script they need to read from, or something more intense like collaborating on long-format video ideas. Additionally, make sure you confirm with the influencer that your expectations for them are realistic and they are comfortable with any preferences or requirements you have for the sponsorship or promotion.

Include any legal documents required by social platforms, sponsors, etc. in your contract

Social platforms have a number of regulations that must be adhered to, so social media influencers are required by social platforms like Instagram and YouTube to include certain legal documents in their contracts – a social influencer contract is usually required for social influencers with a large following. Be sure that you’re aware of these requirements when formulating your deal memo or social influencer contract to keep a clean paper trail and avoid any legal issues.

Involve the influencer in the creative process

Having a script to present to them initially or some specific requirements regarding how your product is presented is normal and often helpful. However, some businesses take it too far and as a result, they sabotage the influencer’s ability to deliver results. Scripts that are too intensive and don’t have any input from an influencer will sound out of character and come across as inauthentic. Oftentimes, some of the best and most adored promotional readings are ones in which brands give influencers plenty of room to do what they do best, which allows the promotion to blend in with the content instead of interrupting it (which people will often skip). Doing so increases your potential ROI and can help foster a long-term relationship with the influencer because you’re recognizing them as a content creator and not just your spokesperson.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing is always changing, adapting to social media trends, new social platforms, evolving social spheres, and most importantly – the demands of consumers. By 2022, social influencers will be even more crucial for businesses across all industries that are looking to grow through social content.

For businesses investing in social media marketing, influencers are only going to become a more lucrative and widely available method to effectively reach new customers and boost brand reputation. Knowing this, it’s important to adhere to ever-evolving regulations surrounding the industry, be thorough in the selection process, and properly recognize the creative ability and authority influencers have as expert trust-builders and sellers with their engaged audiences.

Thinking of Buying an Amazon FBA Business? Read This First.

Are you thinking of buying an Amazon FBA business? If so, it’s important to do your homework first.

In this blog post, we will discuss some of the things you should consider before becoming a new owner and seller. We’ll cover what Amazon FBA is, why someone would want to buy an existing FBA business, benefits and potential drawbacks, plus some key questions a potential buyer should ask before investing in one.

Basic Terms and Concepts to Know

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of important details, let’s be sure we have all the basics covered. If you’re already experienced with buying an FBA business, you’re likely familiar with these already and can skip them.

What is an FBA business?

A Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) online businesses sell products on Amazon but do not directly handle shipping and returns. Unlike Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) sellers, Amazon FBA sellers send their inventory to an Amazon warehouse where they are shipped to customers upon ordering.

This setup can help make selling and running an online business more profitable. However, the convenience of these services comes with related storage fees – knowing how this affects net profits per month is important before you buy.

What types of Amazon businesses are there?

Besides the FBA vs. FBM differentiation listed above, there are a few different ways to categorize different Amazon businesses. First is by their account type:

Individual Seller Account: No account fees, but a $0.99 fee per item sold. This account is typically best for new sellers and those that resell unwanted items on Amazon Marketplace, and Individual Accounts lack a lot of necessary tools for selling at large volumes.

Professional Seller Account: $39.99 fee per month, with no fees per item sold. The fee gives sellers access to various tools and reports that help with inventory management, and they’re most beneficial for a medium or large-scale store with high sales volumes.

However, Amazon businesses can also be categorized by what they’re selling:

Retail Arbitrage: You’ll see these sellers in the “New & Used from” section because they’re reselling products and leveraging small price differences for profit rather than truly having their own brand or product.

Though it’s common on Marketplace and can generate lots of revenue, this category is also rife with misinformation and false promises. There are many claiming to sell courses on how to teach new owners retail arbitrage. Many will claim to see massive profits with minimal effort when in reality, few are actually successful.

Wholesale: These Amazon sellers buy products in bulk to sell at a profit, usually from suppliers or from a vendor.

Wholesale selling on Amazon can deliver consistent results and profit but also heavy competition. There are nearly always multiple other sellers on the market competing for reviews, rankings, and sales, making it difficult to become a best seller. Wholesale Amazon sellers may also need to follow more strict rules on how to operate (e.g., what they write on their listings) depending on their distributor or vendor.

Private Label: This practice involves taking a generic product (typically from platforms like Alibaba), slapping a brand name sticker on it, and selling it as a unique product. This is why you will often find eerily similar-looking products in search results despite all of them technically being a different business. Additionally, though it’s not always the case, private label products have a reputation for being cheap in both price and quality.

A business on Amazon can manufacture and sell its own unique products. Generally speaking, however, when you buy a business that already exists it is one of the three types above. Why? Because if not, you’d be talking about buying an entire business that likely has its own website or off-platform sales, and your role as the owner would be more akin to buying a large enterprise.

Why Should I Buy an Amazon FBA Business Instead of Starting My Own?

There are many cases in which starting your own Amazon FBA business from scratch may be your best bet. However, many prefer to buy an existing FBA business because…well, it already exists.

Most Amazon business owners do not see success – it is a fiercely competitive environment, and it can be extremely difficult and time-consuming to stand out in search results.

Starting out from scratch means you’ll need to gather the ratings, reviews, and search rankings necessary to generate serious profits. Established FBA brands have already made it past that difficult phase and proven their viability (though that doesn’t mean the sales will continue – we’ll get to that later).

Consider These Points Before Buying an Amazon FBA Business

Perhaps someone selling their successful Amazon store came to you personally, or you have become interested in the idea on your own. Before getting into the details of what factors about the seller and business you should consider, you need to be sure that an FBA business is the right move for you.

After all, you could buy a perfectly profitable account and later find that the process isn’t like selling as a regular online store – a common case for many empire flippers with eCommerce experience. Additionally, the time and effort involved to keep the account profitable might not fit your schedule or be worth the price for you personally.

1) Avoiding the high-risk startup phase =! avoiding a high-risk investment.

Just because a business passed the difficult starting phase and generates a solid net profit does not mean it’s in the clear thereafter.

There are additional risks more specific to the platform as well: different types of account hijackers, listing sabotage, price wars, and other malicious practices from bad actors in your competitive environment are always around the corner. It can take days or weeks to address such concerns, and there are no safety nets for loss in sales you may have experienced in that period of time.

Lastly, there are a lot of variables that can be hidden to make a seller account look healthy and like a good investment at first glance. Buying an Amazon business requires a lot of due diligence and should be treated like purchasing any other company – we’ll cover what you need to know and ask before you buy an Amazon store later.

2) Just because you won’t have startup costs doesn’t mean you won’t have additional costs.

You’re likely going to need a bit of cash to get started that’s not related to buying the account. FBA selling often requires large initial investments in inventory, advertising, and some buffer cash as you get the hang of your regular operations.

3) Steady income =! passive income.

A lot of people – especially those aforementioned gurus – like to say that having an Amazon business is akin to passive income or a side hustle. This is technically possible, but extremely unlikely.

Many people starting from scratch are surprised when they discover just how much time is required to keep things going, or get high up enough in search results to see serious growth. In fact, it’s a big reason why many sellers don’t make it past one year even if their business was generating some profit.

You should consider how much time you’re also willing to invest in the brand you purchase in addition to your monetary investments. Factor this in when determining whether you’d be a good fit as the new owner. If you think that you may need to hire extra help (e.g. an Amazon advertising agency) in order to reduce the time you personally put into your store, keep in mind the money you’ll need for this too.

4) No two FBA businesses are completely alike.

You could have two stores selling related products in the same categories, and you’ll still have two completely different stores to consider at the end of the day. Behind the scenes, there are so many factors and strategies that go into selling. Some do better than others despite seemingly identical verticals. For this reason, it’s important you deeply research the business, its customers, and its category before making any final decisions.

Answers to Common Questions About Buying an Amazon FBA Business

Where can I find Amazon FBA businesses for sale?

In most cases, they are sold through brokers. A good site to start with is BizBuySell. It compiles most offers from around the internet onto one place, which makes for easy browsing and discovery. A keyword search can help you filter offers for Amazon FBA businesses specifically. Inversely, if you’re hoping to sell an Amazon FBA business, this is a good place to list it.

How can I verify that an FBA business for sale is legitimate?

It can be very difficult to verify the validity of an online business for sale, which can make the investment feel very risky, even for experienced empire flippers.

We will get into some questions to ask and tips to help ensure that you have the right information when looking at an offer. However, hiring a third party like Centurica to conduct Due Diligence services may be worth the extra money.

How much capital should I start with if I want to buy an FBA business?

Generally speaking, it will cost anywhere from 2-4 times the business’s annual EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization) to purchase an eCommerce business. As mentioned earlier, it’s best to also have additional money reserves enough to cover initial inventory purchases and in most cases, a marketing budget.

The exact number depends on the size, account health, and profitability of the store you’re intending to purchase. If you want to play it safe, consider adding on the sum of operational costs (including inventory) for at least 1 month in addition to the capital you will use to purchase the business. Additionally, factor in the money needed for any legal or consulting services to help with the purchase and transfer process.

What to Look For When Buying an Amazon FBA Business: Conducting Due Diligence

Here are some points you should consider when looking through Amazon stores:

Account Health

One of the first things you want to look at is the health of the Amazon seller account. This will include factors such as how many products are listed, average sales volume, ratings and reviews, and feedback from customers.

An important and often overlooked area is the rate of returns for products. An otherwise successful, high-ranking account can end up taking huge profit losses due to returns. In addition to returns, be sure to look out for these smaller account health details:

Order cancellation ratesLate shipment ratesOrder defect ratesInventory performance index

Don’t be afraid to dive deep into customer feedback, and really take the time to read reviews. Doing so can ensure you pass up offers inflated by fake or bought reviews, which could not only result in an overvalued business but also could run the risk of you getting penalized due to platform rules later on.

Additionally, getting a good idea of poor reviews can help you determine your ability to fix any potential issues. For example, if the majority of bad ratings and reviews outline rude or lack of vendor response to order issues, this is something easily fixable on your end as you would now have direct control over it. However, if defects in products are the main concern, this could be a larger supplier issue that would require more effort and potentially capital to address.

Category

The second thing you’ll want to consider is what categories the business sells in. This will help you determine the amount of competition you may be dealing with in its marketplace, which plays a huge role in later investments like on-platform DSP advertising or off-platform marketing.

You should also consider the account’s positioning within its marketplace. This can help determine whether significant changes or investments will need to be made in updating product offers, optimizing listings, or expanding the business into new products and categories.

Lastly, take the time to determine whether you think there is still plenty of room for business growth within the category and specifically from the FBA account’s position. Some categories can be highly saturated, which would make an emerging seller’s likelihood of success much lower. On the other hand, some FBA accounts may have positioned themselves in lucrative niche markets full of potential.

Accounting Records

We’ll also include profit and loss statements as well as total fees from the platform here, which will give you a solid idea of what the Amazon seller account is worth, net profit, and so on. The past 12 months of operation are the most important for you when calculating value and determining whether the store is profitable.

Checking accounting records will also help you ensure that the FBA account was set up properly and the seller has kept accurate historical records throughout its operation.

Supplier Information and Records

One of the benefits of buying an established store is that you inherit a supplier network. However, this also comes with potential risks if the suppliers are not reliable or have inconsistent contact and communication.

The due diligence process should include verifying supplier information as well as checking to see if there are any records of late shipments, returns, or other issues with suppliers.

For Wholesale Accounts:

This is important to consider if you’re buying an FBA business with the intention of expanding it into retail channels. Distributor relationships and agreements can be a great asset that you acquire as part of purchasing an FBA account, but they may also require an investment on your part to maintain.

Review the terms of any distributor agreements and be sure that you will be able to continue supplying products through those channels if you choose to do so in the future. If you intend to seek out new supplier agreements, be sure to read the fine print of any existing contracts to avoid any legal setbacks that could arise from clauses that define minimum time periods or competing suppliers.

Questions to Ask Before You Buy an Amazon Store

Now that we’ve covered the basics to consider and information to look through about buying a business, here are some questions you should have answers to before making any official agreements or transfers.

In most cases, a seller will have answered these questions before you even ask them, but double-check this list to be sure all bases are covered:

Why is this Seller Central Account for sale?

You want to be sure you have all the details of why the FBA seller decided to put their store up for sale. Not only do you need to know any potential hurdles the seller encounter that made their venture no longer worth it (if any), but it’s also a great way to gauge how honest and straightforward a seller is with you.

Not all FBA stores that owners sell have issues impacting their profitability. Even in the case they do, there’s a chance your position and/or capital as an empire flipper could make it easier for you to promote growth to make it a perfectly profitable business, even if they couldn’t.

In the case that a seller isn’t completely honest about their FBA business for sale or its value, doing proper due diligence and going through the points mentioned above will ensure you catch this before it’s too late.

What are your lead times?

Lead times are important for e-commerce enterprises that source inventory. It’s not possible to sell inventory you don’t have. Therefore, you want lead times from suppliers to deliver your inventory to be short. The quicker your inventory moves, the shorter your lead times should be.

If lead times seem to be long enough to impact sales, this may be a supplier issue that will force you to buy larger volumes at a time or even seek out new suppliers with better results.

Many store owners have experienced longer lead times across the board due to supply chain issues in the past year, especially for that source product from China or elsewhere overseas. This should be factored in when considering supplier-seller relationships and their overall reliability, but could still require you to seek a new supplier regardless.

What is your current marketing strategy?

Nearly all sellers need some sort of Amazon advertising strategy in order to compete well within their category. In fact, many experienced sellers believe it’s not possible to grow a successful FBA business without using Amazon ads.

The most important things for you to know are whether the seller has a well-thought-out strategy and whether they are using Amazon PPC ads exclusively or if they have other social media accounts/affiliate marketing avenues.

Marketing off-platform and via Amazon DSP advertising has become more important for sellers to succeed in recent years, so what the seller already has established will determine how much money you’ll need to either expand or maintain its marketing strategy.

Pixabay Conclusion

Buying an FBA store is a great opportunity for those who want to enter the e-commerce industry but don’t want to make a seller central account from scratch. If you’re interested in buying a business, be sure to do your due diligence. If you’re not sure where to start, you can use these main points and questions to start the due diligence process yourself. There are also services you can use to assist with this process.

Remember that in addition to accounting records as well as category and customer research, other commonly overlooked factors like the previous seller’s marketing strategy or supplier lead times can play a large role in how valuable the business is long-term.

Not familiar with Amazon advertising strategy? Check out our article on the different types of Amazon sponsored ads, and subscribe to our newsletter below for news and tips on your favorite digital platforms every week!

Outsmart These 4 Facebook Ad Setbacks Caused By the iOS 14 Update

Here’s news you probably already heard: The iOS14 update has caused Meta (formerly Facebook) a lot of problems with their advertising business. Meta has already decided that their long-term solution is to build the metaverse, but the people using their ads can’t exactly wait out the massive decline in quality.

If you’re using Facebook or Instagram ads to increase your sales, get the word out about your brand, and find new customers, what can you do to help your campaigns avoid the common problems caused by the iOS14 update? Below, you’ll find 4 common issues Facebook ads users experience due to the iOS14 update, how to overcome them, and some general Facebook Ad tips to avoid further frustrations in the future.

1) Problem: Difficulty Optimizing Ad Spend and Higher CPAs

Why it’s happening: Pre-update, Facebook was able to use this data to measure conversions faster and better because it had consistent signals of data from each action being taken by a particular user. The time it took for Facebook’s algorithms to figure out the best way to place your ads according to your goal CPA (cost per acquisition) was very brief, because every single person viewing and clicking was providing it more context.

With the iOS 14 update, a big chunk of users won’t give the algorithms a lot to work with, so the period of time it has no idea what might optimize your ad placements according to your CPA is much, much longer.

As a result, advertisers across nearly all verticals have seen CPA increases of 20-50%, which can absolutely devastate ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and make it very difficult for advertisers to know how to adjust their ad spend or scale their ads.

Solution: Make Your Testing and Scaling Separate Campaigns to Minimize Changes

For years, testing out different campaign creatives, daily ad spends, and other campaign components was a matter of adding the change in, taking out any old creatives or underperforming setup options, and waiting a few days to see how it panned out. This is no longer the case.

Any time you edit your campaign, you’re restarting the process of Facebook’s algorithms figuring out how to optimize your ad.

Now that this phase is longer, that also makes testing and editing campaign elements and options incredibly expensive. By keeping your testing and scaling processes completely separate from each other, you’re ensuring that you keep this expensive phase of ad optimization as short and sweet as possible.

In other words, for every campaign you want to make, you should make a tiny budget testing campaign where it won’t absolutely kill your ROAS to make adjustments, and another campaign meant to be scaled using only the changes that have been tested and proven to bring better results. So if your previous Facebook advertising strategy used to look like this:

Brand Awareness CampaignEngagement CampaignConversions Campaign

…and you’re experiencing problems with budget optimization, scaling, and/or high CPAs for Facebook Ads, try this setup instead:

Brand Awareness Testing Campaign ($)Brand Awareness Scaling Campaign ($$$)Engagement Testing Campaign ($)Engagement Scaling Campaign ($$$)Conversions Testing Campaign ($)Conversions Scaling Campaign ($$$)

Keep in mind that the algorithms are still just as good at optimizing your ad placements as before; they just need a heck of a lot more conversions to get the same amount of data. This strategy of separating testing and scaling completely ensures the campaign you’re putting your real money into is using only proven changes that are worth the more expensive waiting period as the algorithms get the data they need.

2) Problem: FB Ads Conversion Reporting Numbers Aren’t Reliable

Why it’s happening: Data discrepancies in Facebook Ads reports are a result of the same issue as ad optimization issues: a loss of data overall.

The biggest difference between ad optimization issues and conversion tracking issues is that conversion tracking issues are a result of not being able to measure Facebook Ads data as thoroughly as usual. This problem only got worse with the iOS 14.5 update.

For advertisers who depend on Facebook’s conversion tracking – which comes in the form of pixel-based conversions data – this is a huge issue that can drive up costs and create uncertainty of the usefulness of ad spend, especially when you have gotten used to 8 different types of conversion events and a 28-day attribution window.

Solution: Track Website Conversions Offline, or Run Lead Generation Campaigns

By default, even if you are using Facebook Pixel or Conversions API, you should start assuming that Facebook Ads reporting cannot provide you with comprehensive, accurate conversions numbers enough to be relying on it 100% as your source of truth.

So what do you do if you track conversions based on Facebook’s data?

You track them off-platform yourself and/or through a third-party platformYou keep your entire Facebook ad campaign and conversions on-platform – the most reliable and useful way to do so is using lead generation campaignsHow to track conversions for your Facebook Ad campaigns off-platform

The good news is that you don’t need to invest in any special tools or integrate anything unless you want to experiment for the sake of convenience. Even more good news, you can and should still use Facebook Pixel or Conversions API at the same time.

If you already have your own website, chances are you also already have integrations like Google Analytics to monitor traffic, sign-ups, and sales.

For those using Google Analytics, you can use the Google Campaign URL Builder to make a trackable link to use in your Facebook advertising campaign. The URL you create can serve as the destination URL for your ad campaign or can go in the optional URL parameters section.

So long as you’ve set up your UTM tags correctly, you can find your conversions data by logging into Google Analytics and clicking on Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium.

Why Lead Generation Campaigns could be your iOS14-proof Facebook ad strategy

Lead generation campaigns avoid the reporting issue because they can achieve conversions in the form of sign-ups while keeping users on-platform the entire time. Your reports and results are more reliable because you’ve effectively minimized potential gaps in data.

Why should I make a lead generation campaign if the conversions I want are sales?

Even if your end goal is a completely different conversion like sales, lead generation campaigns on Facebook can be a long-term strategy for your advertising success without third-party data. Lead generation ad campaigns build quality first-party data lists that you can use for your other campaigns and to build effective lookalike audiences.

3) Problem: Facebook Ad Targeting Isn’t Bringing Results

Why it’s happening: The fewer people that can be tracked across different sites, the smaller certain Facebook Ad Targeting Audiences are going to be. This is especially true for those who relied on Lookalike audiences as a staple for their ad campaigns because Lookalike audiences are constructed based on conversions data that’s now wildly inaccurate in many cases.

There’s also a second reason not directly related to the iOS 14 or 14.5 updates: Meta’s decision to remove certain types of targeting after they caused too much controversy.

Solution: Broad Targeting Using Strategic Creatives

The best way to get around this issue is by using your own first-party data, but getting enough of this data if you don’t have it already can take some time. So in the meanwhile, it’s time to re-strategize how you target different audiences.

Instead of relying on the ad platform to target audiences for you, hone in on creatives that will catch the attention of your niche audiences, while setting up your campaign using broad targeting.

How can broad targeting still effectively find specific target audiences?

Again, keep in mind that Facebook’s algorithms still work just as great as ever in terms of optimizing where your ad is placed. So long as you ensure that your creatives are speaking to the right people within a broader audience, those within your target audiences will be the clicks, views, and conversions that teach the algorithm where and who to place your ad in front of for better results.

So in the end, you are still reaching and advertising primarily to your target audiences – you’re just using the algorithms ability to detect patterns to do so versus clicking a box from the start.

How do I know if my creatives can target my audiences well?

A surefire way of making sure that your creatives can reach your desired audiences is by reusing or recycling creatives that have worked well for you in other campaigns. For example, if you had a very successful Google Ads campaign using a certain set of creatives, recycle them by ensuring they’re optimized for Facebook Ad Image Specs and to better fit Facebook Ad formats. Set up a small test campaign for A/B testing, make a few other adjustments if needed, and voila!

In fact, now might be a good time to dig up and relaunch or recycle an entire Facebook ad campaign that worked for you pre-iOS14. Those campaigns still have vital data points that can greatly reduce the longer optimization phase of the algorithm and reach target audiences. You might have an older campaign that doesn’t require extensive changes in setup in order to be relevant now.

4) Problem: Retargeting Audiences Are Too Small to Deliver Results

Why it’s happening: Retargeting audiences have been equally impacted by the iOS14 update as lookalike audiences, especially if you have a very niche product or audience. Apple iOS device users can’t be tracked enough to even know whether they belong in your retargeting audience or not anymore, which has made this audience shrink drastically.

Without a change in strategy, using retargeting audiences for a Facebook ad campaign can result in your ad being shown to the same handful of people over and over again with minimal results and at a great cost.

Solution: Combine Broad Retargeting and Lead Generation Campaigns to Expand Your Retargeting Audience

Similar to the previous solution, the first step to solving the issue of a limited retargeting audience is to focus your targeting via creatives, set up your campaign for broad targeting, and let the algorithm figure out how to target them through optimization.

To further expand your retargeting audience, set up a Lead Generation Campaign. The reporting and results will be accurate since it’s all on-platform, and you’ll end up with a sizable list of emails to use for retargeting campaigns in the future.

Conclusion

I don’t need to tell you that the iOS 14 update has tanked the Facebook advertising efforts of countless frustrated marketers and businesses. It’s frustrating to lose the control and success that Facebook ads so easily brought millions of people for well over a decade so suddenly, but by circumventing the signal loss caused by the lack of data from iOS devices with these strategies, you can ensure that it doesn’t drastically increase your CPAs, keep you in the dark about conversions, or impede your ability to reach your targeting and retargeting audiences.

They’re effective solutions, but they’re certainly not as easy and simple as pre-2021 advertising. If you want to be able to get results without all the headache and extra effort, hiring a Facebook ad agency maybe your ideal iOS 14-proof strategy.

The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act of 2022 Explained

The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act was introduced recently by representatives Anna Eshoo, Jan Schakowsky, and senator Cory Booker, and it immediately generated a lot of buzz within the marketing industry. But what is the bill really about, what areas are most important for businesses and advertisers to be aware of, and how worried should the industry be? 

This article gives a full overview of the Banning Surveillance Targeting Act of 2022, covering the most important bits of legislation, key points, and the surrounding discussion.

What Do They Define as “Targeted Advertising” or “Surveillance Advertising?” 

The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act outlines a few different use cases for targeting data that have different levels of restriction. Here’s the best way to understand the different rule sets:

Third-Party Data 

Any data purchased from a third party by either the advertiser or the platform/provider falls under the following protocol. Additionally, any first-party data the provider has that the advertiser does not is also considered third-party data.

For this circumstance, the bill differentiates targeting ads based on individually identifiable information and inherent traits versus targeting based on contextual information. 

“Targeted advertising,” or “surveillance advertising,” as defined by the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, is any material that can single out a specific person or device based on identifiable information about them such as their name, address, phone number, or email address. In addition, information that can figure out a person is a member of a protected group or class (e.g. a specific race or religion) would also be prohibited. More specifically, the bill in its current form defines “targeted advertising” as an ad provider or platform providing an advertiser or third party any of the following: 

A list of individuals or connected devicesContact information of an individual A unique identifier for any specific individual or deviceAny personal information that could be used to identify an individual or device 

That last one might look like a repeat of the point before it, but it’s not – this is to specify that the bill also prohibits the use of information that could indirectly be used to figure out someone’s identity. For example, specific location data might not give an exact address of where you live or work or define which location is which, but someone can easily figure this out using it.

The bill specifies that a platform or provider cannot provide an advertiser or third party with this data, and they may not target, optimize, or analyze advertising on the basis of it.

The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act defines some examples of contextual information that it does not prohibit for ad targeting: 

Search history and termsContent that individuals engaged with or viewedRegionalized placesZero and First-Party Data Directly From The Advertiser

Individually identifiable information from the advertiser themselves can be used, so long as it was not obtained from any other party or source. For example, if users consented to give their email address to a business in order to sign up for their newsletter, that email list is not prohibited by the Act to use for that specific business’ ads.

However, the first or zero-party data from the advertiser cannot identify an individual as a member of a protected class or contain information that would be able to identify them as such. Under Federal Law, a “protected class” is any race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, or disability.

The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act of 2022 would require a written confirmation from the advertiser that any lists they use have met these standards before being used – i.e. the data was not purchased or collected from any other party, nor does it define users as members of a protected class.

To What Extent Would Targeted Advertising Be Banned? 

Anything that falls under the above bullet points would be prohibited entirely under the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act of 2022 (in its current form, that is — more on that later). So as it stands, a business seeking to advertise could only use their first-party data, with the exception of information like religion or gender, as well as contextual data from the platform or provider such as search history or previously viewed content. However, the platform/provider cannot give its own personally identifiable first-party data to the advertiser, nor can it use its personally identifiable first-party data to optimize or analyze ads even if the data is not given to or used by the advertiser directly.

The Federal Trade Commission would be in charge of enforcing the act, with penalties ranging from $100 – $1000 per violation. The FTC also has the right to add further specifications to the act if necessary. 

The bill can be challenged in court under certain circumstances, with the Attorney General having the right to investigate and potentially give appeals for related court cases. However, this does not mean they can make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. 

How Bad is the Act for Advertisers and Digital Platforms? 

Simply put, it’s not as bad as it sounds for several reasons. However, it also depends on who you are. Here, we’re going to consider the hypothetical situation that the bill passes in its current state with no major changes. Later, we’ll briefly discuss why that’s unlikely.

Potentially Bad News For First-Party Data Platforms

Some platforms like Amazon and TikTok created ad empires seemingly overnight solely because they had the advantage of first-party data over companies like Meta, which were now in hot water over their reliance on third-party data. In order to use the TikTok app or Amazon’s services, you consent to give over large amounts of incredibly personal information that they have full right to use. 

So far, the public hasn’t been as concerned about this as they were with cookies. However, the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act of 2022 would put limitations on these platforms that currently do not exist by redefining this data as not first-party data. The bill considers it third-party data as it originates from the platform, not the advertiser. As we’ve seen, that doesn’t mean the platforms cannot provide any of their data at all, but platforms like Amazon rely heavily on personally identifiable information for ad targeting. 

Potentially Bad News for Small Businesses

Most of the rhetoric around targeted advertising and data tracking revolves around tech giants and large corporations, but the truth is, digital advertising is vital for many small businesses. This is especially true ever since the pandemic when many small local businesses took a huge hit. Obtaining a digital presence and being able to find their audiences online was for many, the difference between staying afloat and going out of business entirely. 

It’s easy for a big company to hand over a huge list of their own first-party data for advertising purposes, but a small mom-and-pop shop can’t do the same for their small Facebook ad campaign. Digital advertising practices have plenty of downsides and major flaws worth addressing, doing so in this way might take away its best trait; allowing small and local businesses to harness the same tools large corporations regularly use to out-compete them. 

The Banning Surveillance Targeting Act Is Dangerously Broad 

Some parts of the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act go a little too far in an attempt to cover all the bases of potentially invasive ad targeting, resulting in broad points that would be difficult to navigate in practice. 

For example, an advertiser’s first-party data is OK to use – email addresses, phone numbers, etc. – but cannot include data that could target someone as a member of a protected class. That wording implies that it’s perfectly fine for an advertiser to target your personal information so long as they have it already, but not discern whether your gender would make you more or less interested in an advertisement for female beauty products. 

There’s another issue with the same point: what if your product or service is specifically for a protected class? It seems a bit silly that a custom walking aid-maker couldn’t target those in need of canes, or a mosque couldn’t target fellow Muslims to spread the word about its charity services. This ties back to small businesses as well – it doesn’t hurt Heinz that much to avoid targeting in this way, but it can hurt small businesses in specialized industries seeking to serve members of protected classes very much. 

Lastly, there needs to be more specification surrounding information that can indirectly identify someone, because as it stands, it leaves a huge gaping hole of potential legal troubles. For example, if a name can easily imply a person’s gender, is that now prohibited if it’s included in their email address on a first-party data list? What if their search history includes information relevant to their race or religion? When you consider algorithms and their role in detecting patterns, how is a platform or advertiser reasonably supposed to avoid this data being used in ad optimization even if their intent was never to directly target that trait?

It’s possible that the answers to these questions aren’t bad news for advertisers – but that needs to be specified.

However, Contextual Advertising Already Exists

The controversy around third-party data and cookies for ads is not new, and advertising platforms have been developing cookie-less advertising methods for years. Granted, that doesn’t mean they made the full switch over to cookie-less methods or self-enforced bans on third-party data tracking, but it means that even if the bill passes in its current form, it wouldn’t kill digital advertising. It would just make that evolving switch over to alternative methods much faster and perhaps a bit more chaotic. 

For example, we recently covered Snap’s Advanced Conversions system, which uses data obfuscation, contextual data, and cohort analysis to provide advertisers with better ad optimization and campaign reports without ever using identifiable information. They’re far from the only ones to have such a system in the works or already in place; though each platform’s method differs, they all strive to avoid most or all of the data being prohibited in the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act.

We Can’t Draw Conclusions on The Act Yet – Here’s Why

All that being said, it’s highly unlikely the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act is going to get very far – at least, it won’t without tons of significant changes – so speculating on its outcomes with any confidence is not productive. Why is this the case? Well…

Most Bills Die in the House of Representatives

Over 11,000 bills make it to congress, but only 7% ever become law. 

It’s important to stop and realize that even though the internet has been going crazy over the BSA, it won’t necessarily go anywhere. In all likelihood, it will die in committee or get voted down – basically, it’s a lot of bark with little evidence it’ll ever bite.

No Act Goes Through Congress Without Extreme “Revisions” 

Even if the BSA passes, it will not be passed as is.

When the Affordable Care Act finally passed, it had over 100 amendments. The Patriot Act started as a nine-page document, which eventually ballooned to over 300 pages by the time it was finalized. 

The point here is, the 20 pages of information in the BSA are difficult to discuss in the first place when you consider how unrecognizable it will be by the time you should start becoming concerned. 

Don’t Forget About Lobbying

Here are the top five companies involved in congressional and federal lobbying for Internet-related matters: 

Notice some familiar names? It’s not surprising, but lobbying on behalf of tech giants post-2016 increased by tens of millions of dollars:

“In recent years, the tech industry giants have shelled out large amounts of money especially in response to criticism from lawmakers over privacy issues, antitrust concerns and more.”  Krystal Hur, OpenSecret.org

Is it widely speculative to assume a bill might be shot down entirely because of a few lobbyists? Maybe. It’s about as wild as the fact that dozens of congress members become lobbyists. Or the fact that businesses spend more money lobbying Congress than taxpayers do to fund Congress. Or as wild as the fact that the love affair between lobbyists and Congress members isn’t always figurative. 

The fact of the matter is, lobbying of Congress might convince enough members to represent the idea that the BSA Act should die in Congress; as most bills do. It’s important to keep that in mind no matter where the majority public opinion seems to be, or the opinion of many advertisers — money talks, after all.

Why Was the Bill Introduced? The US is Lagging Behind on Tech & Data Policy

The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act may be a reaction to the rapidly changing trends of targeted advertising and increased user privacy prioritization that is already underway. To put it another way, consider the bill as potential government-backed enforcement of changes that have already started rather than an entirely new and/or sudden change. These are, after all, industry practices that have been under scrutiny and debate for years, rather than new or ground-breaking developments.

The GDPR and other European regulatory and legal bodies have been policing large advertising platforms and other tech firms in a very similar way. Aside from this, many big businesses have taken steps away from typical data gathering methods, such as Apple and the tracking opt-out included in the iOS14 update. Others like Google have already started phasing out third-party data and cookies on their own, albeit less swiftly.

The Cambridge Analytica Scandal Made Political Involvement Inevitable

Tech companies enjoyed a long reign of self-regulation and little intervention from the government. Digital advertising methods were no exception, but that all changed after the Cambridge Analytica Scandal with Meta (formerly Facebook). As AdvertiseMint CEO Brian Meert notes, “No one really knew where the line was, but in 2016, everyone knew they crossed it.”  

A vocal group of concerned citizens, including privacy-oriented companies like DuckDuckGo and Mozilla, had been raising alarm bells long before 2016. However, the scandal alerted everyone to the fact that this invasiveness concerned more than personal privacy – when in the wrong hands, it could influence democratic and political processes, and that self-governing policy clearly had not prevented this worst-case scenario. 

Considering this, it was a matter of when not if the US government got involved, because Meta’s massive misstep in 2016 forced them to. Why it took them over five years to do so is anyone’s guess – hopefully, it was to become familiar enough with the digital world that they’re not so obviously out of touch this time around.

Common Viewpoints Surrounding The BSA of 2022For those in favor:

It’s undeniable that some sort of legislation needs to be in place surrounding how data online is tracked and used by private companies. The fact that we made it this far without only makes sense when you watch just out-of-the-loop government officials are about the Internet, let alone decide on some sort of policy. 

Either way, the bill is not too far away from similar regulations in place within European agencies. Entities like the GDPR aren’t perfect, but they’re also a step in the direction the majority of digitally native voters want privacy laws to go in. 

This point gets skipped over a little too easily by marketers and other industry professionals when they discuss the impact of privacy laws. Too often, the discussion is framed as a potential detriment to a great method of reaching the right customers, as if customers aren’t aware of how much they benefit from targeted ads. This completely ignores the main point, that it’s the method in which targeted advertising is done that is the primary concern. 

It also ignores the fact that most of those customers were never ok with that method in the first place. The reason this issue became such a big controversy wasn’t a sudden shift in public opinion; it was because few were aware to the extent their privacy was being invaded nor the implications this could have beyond selling products. By the time they found out, any hope of re-establishing that trust was long gone.

For those against: 

All of the above is a completely reasonable point of view, but that doesn’t make the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act of 2022 a reasonable solution. Regulation for data tracking and the use of data in advertising needs to at the least, draw a clear line for providers and advertisers to be aware of. As it stands, the bill is too broad to accomplish this. 

Even if those specifications were to be made, it’s worth discussing whether those for the bill have a good perspective on who it is going after and hurting most. It’s easy to have no sympathy or concern for Meta, but the mood changes when you realize that it’s medical research, charities, and small local businesses that are impacted far more than any tech giant or corporation will be should the BSA pass as it stands. 

Lastly, the public outrage and opinion don’t line up with the actions of most Internet users. The truth is, most of the very same people who voice concerns do not even bother to access the transparency tools they have access to, like public ad libraries, or Facebook’s complete account data logs and settings. Even fewer would be willing to pay for the platforms they’re seeking to limit.

It’s unreasonable to demand advertisers and platforms dismantle an entire economy like it’s a simple request. It’s even more unreasonable to simultaneously expect user benefits of the system you just abolished to remain. 

The Most Common and Least-Discussed Bipartisan Opinion:

The truth is, there is a consensus on the BSA across opinions and even party lines. It’s about the same as most bills, and it never gets discussed enough in the media. It sounds a bit like this, and speaks for itself: 

Conclusion

It’s generally agreed across major parties that there are some issues with the current state of privacy laws when it comes to advertising. While they each have slightly different stances on how they would like to address these problems, we can all agree on the fact that The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act of 2022 is far too early on in its journey through Congress to start drawing conclusions or discussing outcomes. It’s worth keeping an eye on because it does have implications for advertisers, advertising platforms, and users alike.

Realistically though, this is now a matter of US Congressional processes. That’s a polite way of saying the Act will either go nowhere slowly or will have amendments that change the discussion entirely if it does go anywhere.

Snap Advanced Conversions Looks Promising, But How Does It Work?

What is Snap Advanced Conversions?

Snap’s Advanced Conversions is a data collection, analysis, and reporting process that provides quality advertising services and conversions reports while respecting user privacy and the increasing restrictions around data tracking. Its strategy and how it works make it especially promising compared to other solutions (or the lack thereof) currently offered up by platforms that previously relied on third-party data for advertising.

Advanced Conversions was officially launched in 2021, but its features and capabilities are being regularly developed and updated. Despite its infancy, it has already gained some controversy and is often labeled as Snap’s method of “bypassing” iOS data tracking opt-outs. The notion that Snap Advanced Conversions “skirts around” data opt-out and tracking rules is found throughout recent media, but it doesn’t paint a very accurate complete picture of this new feature and what it actually does. 

For investors, advertisers and users alike, it’s important to get an idea of how Advanced Conversions works. This article is a good starting point if you are one of the above, and will cover:

A simple summary of what Snap Advanced Conversions isA straightforward explanation of how Advanced Conversions worksImportant upcoming developments and updates A deep dive into why these developments are important to keep an eye onHow Advanced Conversion Works, in Snap’s Own Words: 

Snap explains Advanced Conversions in three steps:

Obfuscating impression and conversion data so it can no longer be traced to an identifiable account or userCombining this data together and sorting them into groups that are useful for ad optimization and reporting using cohort analysisRepeat steps 1 and 2 on a daily basis. Reports are delayed by 36 hours to prevent real-time attacks and make the results even less traceable to any particular user or account. 

It sounds straightforward, but to make things more clear, let’s break those three steps down further in a more simple way. 

How Snap Advanced Conversion Works, Complete Breakdown: 

The best way to understand how Advanced Conversion actually works is to compare it with traditional ad optimization and reporting to understand what it’s attempting to avoid and solve. The goal of every digital advertising platform is to provide businesses with ad placements that result in clicks, conversions, and sales. Data is key to doing this.

So now, the question for digital platforms like Snap is: How can we give results to businesses only data can bring, but without the invasion of privacy that ad optimization and reporting previously relied on upon?

Step 1: Make personally identifiable data from Snap and the advertiser unusable

Snap Advanced Conversions solves this by taking the focus away from exact, user-identifiable data and focusing instead on the meat and potatoes of what advertisers were looking for in the first place: groups and patterns in data that are useful for insights so they’re not showing ads to random uninterested people, they know where their ads are going, and what gets clicks. 

To do so, Advanced Conversions relies on two sets of data: Impressions data (first-party data from Snap) and Conversions data (first-party data from the advertiser). This data includes identifiable information by nature — most first-party data does. However, Snap obfuscates both of these datasets separately so that:

a) Impressions data does not give the advertiser any identifiable information of Snap users,
b) Conversions data does not give Snap any identifiable information of the advertiser’s conversions and customers, and
c) Identifiable information from both sets cannot be combined to use in ad optimization and reports, or be accessible to any outside companies. 

What does “obfuscate data” mean, and how does it ensure personal privacy? 

The user data that makes you identifiable as a person or by your device are things like email addresses, phone numbers, and IDFAs (i.e. a tracking number for Apple iOS devices specifically for advertising). Obfuscating data means the process makes these pieces of information unintelligible and unusable so that they are not joined or used in any way in the next step.

It’s the data equivalent of black bars redacting sensitive details on a document before handing it over to someone else. This obfuscation prevents Snap from ever learning what its users are doing on other sites or apps, and the same for advertisers. Because the data sets are obfuscated before analysis is ever done, potential bad actors can’t simply “decode” this obfuscated data in analyses and reports either, as the information was never a part of the equation when making them and was not obfuscated as one unified dataset.

Step 2: Combine the remaining information to find useful patterns, groups, and traits

The now-obfuscated datasets are now combined and organized into different groups with common characteristics. These common characteristics are extremely important and helpful in creating the same conversion reports that advertisers and businesses are familiar with, and can reliably give advertisers insight into how well their campaign performed. 

It can’t and won’t, however, give them any insights at a user level. In other words, it’s all aggregate data that paints a good picture of the advertisers’ audience on Snapchat for important campaign metrics without ever handing out any names. 

You can think of it as a buyer persona — it’s accurate, detailed, based on heaps of information about real people, and you can use it to get real results when trying to reach them. You can even compare it to the customers you know firsthand, but you can’t pick it apart to figure out the specific people behind all these informative insights.

Step 3: Continue this process every day, with reports delivered to the advertiser 36 hours after the fact. 

This delay is purely for the sake of privacy, making it harder to try and draw connections between real-time user activity and insights in conversions reports. The delay is also a security measure against any outside entities attempting to do the same thing if attacks were to occur. 

Current Limitations of Snap Advanced Conversions 

Advanced Conversions was updated a few months after its 2021 launch to allow advertisers to see a small portion of real-time analysis, but it takes 36 hours to receive the entire report from the Advanced Conversions process. This 36-hour timeframe isn’t entirely accurate though, as Snap recommends waiting ~72 hours before drawing any conclusions.

This is the system’s biggest drawback for advertisers as of now — the delay is not only frustrating but also leads to confusion for those not used to it. 

For example, the delay can cause CPX (any “cost per ___” metric) to initially look much higher than what the advertiser’s max bid was even after the full 36-hour delay. The real metrics become more accurate after a few days of daily analysis and full reports, but any advertiser that doesn’t read this note on Snap’s information on Advanced Conversions might reduce their max bid in reaction and hurt their own campaign in the process.

If the advertiser found any relief in the lowering CPX metrics a few days later, they might be a bit disappointed to see that their returns lowered with it as well — ROAS also suffer the same initial over-projection for the first few days and become more accurate in the same 72-hour timeframe.

This also makes any A/B testing difficult, at least if you’re trying to do so in a timely manner. You can’t rely on any estimates or modeling figures either; the system currently does not provide any.

All of the above is why Snap quickly decided to include a snippet of the real-time analysis for advertisers while they wait for full reports to kick in. Still, it’s hard to ask advertisers accustomed to real-time reports from third-party data to be patient, especially when platforms with tons of personal first-party data don’t have to ask them to. 

Upcoming Updates and Developments

Snap keeps their description of upcoming developments fairly vague: Advertisers should expect a “more holistic, real-time view” of results — but no word on exactly when other than early 2022, and they leave this note with “More information to come.” 

What we do know is that they’re intending on addressing Advanced Conversions’ one major flaw of delays, and we know roughly how they plan on doing that: conversion modeling, to provide those estimates the process currently doesn’t have.  

 

Though Advanced Conversions is a novel process of reporting that is far from perfect now, it has a good track record of delivering on promised launches and updates thus far. If we use that credibility to make any guesses of this near-future update, it’s safe to say that whatever month coming up the update is released for Advanced Conversions, it will be exactly what is promised; the solution to the system’s few growing pains, and perhaps Snap’s next big win. 

Why You Should Keep An Eye on Snap’s Developments

Traditional advertising on most digital platforms relies heavily on third-party data in order to find the most suitable audiences and track important aspects of campaign performance like impressions, conversions, and click-through rate (CTR). This caused issues for many major platforms as the usage of cookies and other data tracking methods began to decline. It’s such a pillar of discussion in the digital economy, you’d have a hard time not reading about it in business media.

The lack of sufficient data for advertising due to opt-out policies like the iOS14 update resulted in losses in ad revenue, plummeting share values, and general frustration from the businesses relying on these platforms for their ad campaigns. 

The consensus is to abandon its usage completely in favor of first-party data, but this is yet another problem: It’s nowhere near as widely available. 

Some platforms automatically have plenty, like Amazon or TikTok, due to how the platforms work and the permissions given by users in order to access them. However, a typical social media platform does not. In other words, there is no way for companies like Meta or Snap to provide the same quality of advertising by simply swapping third-party data out with first-party data in their traditional reporting and optimization systems.

They can’t rely on the third-party data they already have either. Personal preferences, interests, and even basic information like emails are subject to change, which makes most third-party data unreliable unless it’s fresh and regularly updated.

For companies in this predicament, there is no standard alternative solution in place to save their advertising, a.k.a their main source of revenue and what makes the platforms free to use. As a result, most are opting (read: scrambling) to internally develop their own solutions according to their resources and requirements. 

Due to the nature of first-party data and the changing social media landscape, it’s unlikely that there will be one widely accepted method for ad optimization and reporting for quite some time, if ever. But whichever company manages to figure out the best way to provide the reliable advertising that businesses grew accustomed to will win big as we approach the inevitable death of third-party data advertising — so long as advertisers and investors aren’t waiting for too long, that is.

According to Snap, they won’t have to; unless they insist on waiting for the metaverse.

14 Hidden Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Business

Social media marketing is a must for most successful businesses seeking new customers and a wider audience (and a must if you want to do viral marketing, too). However, it’s not just about having a Facebook advertising campaign and tweeting out your products every once in a while – with the right strategy, there are benefits to social media besides more traffic and more sales.

In this article, we’ll discuss 14 lesser-known benefits of social media marketing for business owners. We’ll also cover 4 potential drawbacks so you can enter the world of social media for business with confidence and determine if now is the right time for your brand to start its own social media strategy. 

Immediate Benefits of Social Media Platforms for Business1) Easily Generate Customer Created Content

Social media channels make it easy for customers to spread the word about your business and generate tons of free marketing material. For example, the popular cleaning brand “The Pink Stuff” became a sensation on TikTok and even landed themselves a spot on Amazon’s Internet Famous page as users submitted videos of them using the pink products for a variety of household cleaning chores.

The unique look and multipurpose usage of The Pink Stuff allowed social media to serve as free advertising, but any brand can use social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Facebook to encourage, engage with, and share user-generated content from happy customers while saving on marketing costs at the same time.

2) Find & Nurture More Top-Funnel Leads

Generating leads is one of the main goals for any B2B marketer, and social media can help businesses efficiently find and nurture more top-funnel leads. Platforms like LinkedIn provide an incredible opportunity to connect with potential customers in a professional setting, and Twitter’s lead generation cards make it easy for interested individuals to fill out forms with just one click.

Lead generation via social media marketing isn’t exclusively beneficial for B2B marketers either: Social media platforms can be used to encourage people to sign up for loyalty programs, newsletters, or special events. In the era of first-party data, these audience lists are extremely valuable for any successful marketing strategy and can help you target future campaigns more accurately.

3) Observe & Analyze Your CompetitorsPhoto by Carlos Esteves on Unsplash

Social media is a great tool for observing and analyzing your competitors. For example, by searching “Whole Foods” on Twitter, you can see how many people are talking about the brand today or what articles they’re sharing with their audience members. You can also view Facebook pages of other large brands to determine which social media marketing strategies are working best for them and which ones you should avoid.

Competitor analysis can help your business in a few ways: You might find that one of your competitors is using a social media marketing strategy that you hadn’t thought of, decide to focus on a different demographic than what another company is targeting, or even borrow an idea or two for future content promotion or organic posts.

Long-Term Benefits of Having a Social Media StrategyPhoto by Kaleidico on Unsplash4) It Gives Your Brand a Bigger & Better Personality

Social media marketing allows brands to show off their personalities and connect with customers on a more personal level. Companies can build trust and customer loyalty by communicating directly with people through social media feeds that have been designed specifically for each platform.

The personality factor of social media platforms for businesses is true for large companies and even individual professionals. For example, both RyanAir and Lawyer Mike Mandrell have found dedicated followings on TikTok. RyanAir shows off its brand’s casual character in its content ideas by hopping onto trends and showcasing employees having fun with it, while Mandrell, better known as “Law By Mike” has gathered a dedicated community throughout social media by offering legal advice and opinion on trending topics and updates on big ongoing lawsuits.

5) You Can Practice Social Listening for Better Marketing & Content

Social listening is the process of monitoring online conversations to see what people are saying about your brand, products, or industry. This information can be used to improve marketing strategies and content, including blog content or copy on your website.

The best way to practice social listening is by setting up alerts for specific keywords and phrases related to your brand on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and others. You can also take advantage of social media monitoring tools to monitor your brand’s mentions across the web.

Social listening has a few uses directly related to your business, too: You can get direct feedback from ideal customers about how they feel about certain products or services, identify potential influencers that might be interested in working with you on future campaigns and find people who may have had a negative experience with a competitor in the past.

6) You’ll Refine Your Target Audience (or Find New Ones)

Now that third-party data and cookies are on the way out, getting your hands on quality data for audience targeting is more important than ever. Through careful analysis of data from your social media presence, you can determine who your current and potential customers are, what they’re interested in, and where they hang out online to get more engagement and drive traffic to your site or store.

This information can be used to improve ad targeting on social media platforms and throughout your business. For example, you might find that certain keywords and phrases attract a very specific demographic on Facebook while others will only appeal to users who are interested in your industry or geographic location.

Refining your target audiences through social media marketing can help improve conversion rates by sending the right message to the most receptive people possible. It’s especially useful for creating audience lookalikes or remarketing campaigns. More often than not, your social media marketing campaign can help find entirely new audiences you never considered marketing to. 

7) Use Social Media Channels to Enhance Your Customer Journey

The customer journey is the process that customers go through when interacting with your brand, from becoming aware of you and your products to making a purchase and becoming a loyal customer. A well-designed social media strategy can help improve all stages of the customer journey and target users to boost website traffic and sales.

For example, you can use social media to create awareness for your brand by sharing valuable content and updates, engaging with customers who are interested in your products or services, and hosting giveaways to attract new followers.

You can also use social media to improve engagement with customers at all stages of the customer journey by hosting events like live Q&A sessions, running contests for your followers, or conducting polls that give valuable feedback on new products and services, which you can turn into actionable goals for your business.

Social Media Benefits for Small & Local BusinessesPhoto by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash8) Improve and Personalize Your Customer Service

Social media is a godsend for small and local businesses hoping to quickly and affordably provide customer service.  By monitoring social media platforms for negative feedback and complaints, you can address issues before they become bigger problems.

You can also use social media messenger apps to allow customers to schedule appointments and reservations or ask questions directly through the platform. The convenience and ease of use for the user are key aspects of social channels for business that drives more leads and sales. If there are more customers than one employee can handle, automated chatbot subscriptions can automatically answer and categorize leads from messenger apps in the thousands, with providers like ManyChat offering affordable rates for small and local businesses using Instagram and other popular channels.

You can also use social media to personally address customer feedback and questions that would be difficult or time-consuming for your support team to handle via email, phone call, chat, etc. Knowing what your customers want and expect from you on every platform allows you to provide truly personalized service in an otherwise impersonal world.

9) Become a Part of More Genuine Community Engagement

Local businesses have a lot to gain from becoming a part of community groups and conversations on social media. It’s common on platforms like Facebook for people to set up private groups for locals only or based on interests. Quora and Reddit also provide plenty of opportunities for engagement within organized groups and interests, including locations. Participating can do wonders for your brand reputation as people see you and your team involved in community matters. These groups may not find your website via search engines, so having a social media presence within them can really boost awareness for your business.

Just be sure to keep your engagement in these groups genuine and avoid social media advertising – the goal for this kind of engagement is brand awareness and reputation, so you won’t want to use these spaces for blatant promotional posts and social ads unless given specific permissions to do so. However, they can be great for general discussion, answering questions, or promoting a blog post or two.

10) Be Seen as a Pillar Figure in Key Communities & Groups (Online and Offline)Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

There’s no better form of advertisement than a great reputation, especially for small businesses. Once you’ve involved your brand or business in specific social media groups or communities and established yourself as a contributing figure, consider using this to bolster your brand authority further by participating in local events, charities, and supporting other businesses or individuals beyond social media engagement. 

The more involved and well-respected your brand becomes in the communities it participates in, the easier it will be to convert leads into customers. Though most of this engagement is offline activity, it provides plenty of discussion and content for wholesome social media posts. And that’s a benefit we can all get behind!

11) Get Access to Affordable (Or Even Free!) Advertising

Thanks to targeted ads and boosted posts, businesses can reach their target demographics for pennies on the dollar when compared to traditional advertising methods. You can make and track your social media advertising and organic content yourself through Ads Manager and other social media advertising tools, though it may take some time to get used to all of the complex settings and setup options. If you’re running several campaigns at once or large-budget campaigns, hiring an expert digital advertising agency can ensure you reap the benefits of social media ads without any headache. 

With a brilliant social media strategy, it’s also common for businesses to enjoy free promotion by word-of-mouth as users create and share content related to certain brands and products. Some small businesses don’t need to spend a dime on marketing once they’ve nailed social media marketing.

Benefits of Social Media Platforms for Growing CompaniesPhoto by Austin Distel on Unsplash12) Preserve Your Brand’s Personal Touch

Growing from a shop or website to a full-fledged business enterprise is quite the process, and maintaining brand integrity is vital to a successful transition. Social media is an easy way for businesses to maintain a personal touch to their brand identity and maintain genuine engagement with their audiences even at scale.

Even large corporations like Wendy’s frequently use platforms like Twitter to respond individually to users – usually jokingly – which has really defined the company’s character over the past decade or so. All it takes is a dedicated social media manager to preserve your brand’s personalized tone and communication even as your audience grows from the thousands to millions.

13) Stay Relevant in Your IndustryPhoto by Timothy Hales Bennett on Unsplash

A smart and established social media presence can be the difference between staying relevant as a company and being out of the loop on trends, topics, and public opinion. Regular posting and engagement with users on different social media platforms allow you to keep your brand on people’s minds and they serve as a free information hub on communities, competitors, and your industry to be sure you’re always keeping up with the times.

Information and trends gathered from social media can help keep your website content, social media posts, and messaging as fresh and relevant as possible. They can help inspire new topics to cover, keywords or hashtags to use, or even new product lines if your brand deals with seasonal or fashion items. Making social media marketing a key part of your strategy ensures that no matter how quickly your market and industry evolve, you’re always one step ahead of the curve.

14) Safely (and Cheaply) Experiment with New Marketing Strategies and Social Media Campaigns

A business should never stop experimenting with new marketing strategies, but some of them can be very costly and may not always pan out. Growing businesses in particular require a lot of testing and experimentation with their campaigns as they continue to evolve and scale their brand identity and messaging and make the switch from DIY to professional, large-scale advertising campaigns.

Social media provides a much safer and cheaper space to experiment with new ideas before rolling them out on other marketing channels. Helpful analytics features keep track of different metrics for your team to successfully implement A/B testing, and experimental campaigns can be easily altered and scaled depending on their success rates. The ability to “dip your toes in the water” so to speak with different formats, objectives, copy, and creatives ensures that your marketing strategy improves as your company grows.

Potential Disadvantages & Key ConsiderationsPhoto by Jason Dent on Unsplash1) Getting the Most Out of Social Media Requires Investment

If you noticed that a lot of these points included words like “smart” or “dedicated” before “strategy,” it’s because the benefits of social media marketing can’t be achieved with a half-hearted attempt. Each platform differs by demographics, interests, sense of humor, and more, and communities within different social media channels also have their own hashtags, trends, and topics.

This means a considerable amount of time is required to ensure your brand is entering social media spaces the right way, especially if you or your team members aren’t actively participating in these spaces and aren’t aware of their digital culture. It’s always recommended you spend some time lurking around different platforms and communities you’re seeking to have a presence in before making any posts or hiring a social media expert who keeps themselves and your brand in the know at a professional level.

2) Audiences on Social Media Are Savvy and Sensitive to Messaging Missteps

To emphasize the importance of time investment and research, it’s important to know that social media audiences react strongly and poorly to brands that enter their spaces the wrong way – even if their only crime was being a bit behind on trends. Corporate marketing in the digital world has left many users and communities ad-averse and wary of businesses on social media; this means that as a business you need to take the necessary steps to ensure what you’re posting and how you’re reaching out to your audiences is suitable for your platform, communities, and brand.

Additionally, not all trends on social media are a good fit for every brand. Some aspects of social media culture, trends or slang might reflect poorly on your brand even if you use them properly in your posts or campaigns. The damage this can do to your reputation may not be worth the temporary attention of a trending post, and that attention might not be from your target audience, to begin with — something that plenty of brands attempting Twitter advertising have clearly not learned.

3) Good Social Media Strategies Win Big…But a Bad One Can Backfire

Our in-depth look at viral marketing strategies goes into these topics in more detail, but social media campaigns run the risk of backfiring just as much as they do succeeding. Sometimes, it can just be a “cringe” post in poor taste that is quickly buried. However, plenty of brands go viral for all the wrong reasons as millions of users point and laugh at their failed attempt at entering social media spaces.

Which one do you think the average social media user is more likely to remember: the 2018 U.S. midterm election candidates or Wendy’s awful 2018 “Like a Boss” commercial? These social media blunders stick out in people’s minds, but it’s not for no reason – out of touch or slightly “off” marketing on social media is akin to a business posting that they don’t understand their customers where everyone can see. People will be sure to spread the word to communally shame a brand that messes up in this way.

Smaller businesses have a bit more room for forgiveness and therefore more wiggle room to make some mistakes on social media because they have a more personal feel and touch to them. The larger your brand is, however, the bigger a bad post or campaign can backfire completely, and the less forgiveness you’ll receive from the Internet if it does.

4)  Social Media Marketing Is a Long-Term StrategyPhoto by Alexandar Todov on Unsplash

There are some social media masters out there that can establish a brand’s presence on a platform and get the ball rolling impressively fast. Generally speaking though, these social media marketing benefits mentioned shouldn’t be expected quickly. Achieving all these benefits requires a long-term strategy that needs ample time and investment to pay off. You can’t just send one tweet or create an Instagram post and expect your business to flourish overnight – it takes months, tons of research, and constant engagement with various communities on social media for you to be able to reap the full benefits of every platform.

Additionally, social media marketing success is very hard to measure. It falls into the same category as content marketing, where the best ways to measure success aren’t always precise numbers, and sticking to hard numbers only to measure success (e.g. number of likes and shares) can easily lead you to the wrong conclusions. If you’re considering entering social media as a business for the first time this year or are shifting your marketing focus primarily to social media, keep in mind that it’s more of an investment of time than anything else. 

Conclusion

Social channels bring in plenty of benefits for businesses looking to expand their brand awareness, build relationships with current customers or prospects, provide customer service, promote products and services organically, and much more. These 14 benefits outline the tip of the iceberg regarding the payoff social media can offer businesses, but it’s important to keep in mind the 4 key drawbacks of social media we covered before entering a new space as a brand as well. With the right balance of effort, awareness, and authenticity, any brand large or small around the world can experience how social media marketing benefits businesses for themselves.

Is your business large enough to require the help of an expert digital advertising agency for your social media marketing campaigns? Consider your budget and goals to determine whether digital experts are your best bet for achieving maximum ROI and experiencing the benefits of social media for businesses.

How to Deal with Amazon Hijackers: 4 Steps for Amazon Sellers

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

There are many challenges that Amazon sellers face, but few are quite as frustrating and potentially damaging to sales as hijackers and counterfeits.

Scammers will copy your listing, start price wars, or even send threats – and Brand Registry doesn’t always prevent them from doing so, either. If you’re an Amazon seller losing sales from scammers and hijackers and are wondering what you can do about it, this article will provide you with all the information you need to save your store as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Why Amazon Hijackers Are a Common ProblemPhoto by Clint Patterson on Unsplash

Amazon sellers are particularly vulnerable to hijackers for a few reasons. First of all, any seller can list their product on Amazon – which means that your listing could be hijacked by anyone.

Secondly, while Brand Registry does help when hijackers try to sell products with logos or other trademarked images in their listings, it doesn’t protect you from scammers who imitate your listings in other ways. All they need is some photoshop and switching up a letter or two, and they can fly under the radar for weeks or even months before you realize something is wrong.

This sneaky behavior makes it easy for scammers to hijack your listings and sell counterfeit products – which can result in lost sales, lower rankings on Amazon search results pages, and even legal threats from the original manufacturer of your product.

4 Common Tactics of Malicious Amazon HijackersPhoto by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

There are a few different tactics that scammers might use against Amazon sellers in order to hijack their listings:

1) Listing Imitation

They copy your listing, often with the only difference being a slightly different product name and/or altered photos in order to avoid getting caught.

These scammers are the ones you usually notice first because their listings are more or less identical to yours, but they can take away a lot of your traffic before they’re ever removed. Worse yet, it’s common for a new one to pop up almost immediately after you’ve managed to report the first one. If you’re doing retail arbitrage (e.g. building from Alibaba suppliers), there’s no discernable difference from the customer’s point of view between your Amazon business and the other seller because they’re likely selling the exact same product. They’re copying your Amazon listing to price gouge your product listings in the Buy Box, or just as a way to compete with your well-performing listing.

3) Counterfeit Product Sales

Some Amazon hijackers will sell counterfeit products as they imitate your Amazon listings as well. Often, brand name and logo will be changed but not enough for many customers to notice. If you’re a brand owner with a good reputation, you’ll likely deal with multiple sellers attempting to hijack your product listings selling a counterfeit product.

The main difference between this and product or listing imitation is whether or not you have a trademarked product, private label product, and/or Amazon Brand Registry. Listing hijackers selling counterfeit products go beyond listing imitation to infringe on intellectual property. They can easily dupe customers into thinking that they’re buying from private label sellers and hurt your brand reputation in the process. They often show up in the Buy Box of your listings and the counterfeit or similar version of your product will attract customers with lower prices.

2) Account Hijacking

They will hack your account, take your listing(s), and often change prices, descriptions, and more.

This is the most damaging type of Amazon hijacker because it can lead to your account being taken down. Oftentimes the hijacker has a competing listing or is a private label seller themselves, and has hijacked your account to make theirs look better and become the default seller. The changes they make can result in reports and policy violations that lead to your hijacked account being suspended and your listings removed at worst and unhappy customers or negative reviews at best.

4) Listing Sabotage

They will intentionally damage your listing’s ranking using malicious tactics, but without imitating or directly hijacking.

The most common form of sabotage is price gouging. However, a more damaging form of listing sabotage is fake reviews. They will use fake buyer accounts and test buy your products in order to a negative review as a verified buyer or even report you. Some Amazon hijackers will threaten sellers with listing sabotage in addition to other forms of malicious selling to discourage the seller from taking action.

Though a counterfeit seller may use listing sabotage, some may have their own brand (and even Amazon Brand Registry). They target other sellers who are selling the same product even if the products prominently display differences and are clearly not from the same brand simply because they’re competitors.

How Do Scammers and Hijackers on Amazon Get Away With It?Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash

All of the above can be devastating to new sellers or even established brands, so why doesn’t Amazon do more about it?

Amazon support for sellers is notoriously lacking, but in this case, every day they’re unresponsive or unhelpful is costing you. This isn’t because Amazon isn’t concerned about hijacking or scammers on their platform, though – a lot of the changes they made to the a10 algorithm for ranking listings, for example, were to thwart malicious practices and boost the rankings of genuine Amazon sellers. Additionally, the company created the Amazon Transparency Program, the Amazon Project Zero Program, and Amazon Brand Registry to prevent hijackers from copying private label product listings and causing legitimate sellers to lose money.

Still, it’s hard to get Amazon support for fraudulent sellers because:

Amazon is too big for its own good.

When you think about the hundreds of sellers in your category alone, it’s easy to see how your pleas for action can get drowned out in the chaos. The sheer amount of sellers and listings make it easier for non-legitimate ones to go unnoticed. Many products are produced in the same factory and aren’t brand registered, which can make it easy for an unsuspecting customer to fall for an Amazon hijacker thinking they’re buying the actual product from a default seller or registered brand.

Amazon’s values are exploitable.

Amazon touts itself as a “customer-obsessed” company. Guess who isn’t a customer? You.

It’s hard to get Amazon’s support unless you’re a big brand or you can clearly outline that your problem impacts their bottom line – oftentimes, it doesn’t. Amazon’s Brand Registry and Amazon seller central help mitigate this to some extent, but if the hijacker’s product listing page has positive reviews and customers haven’t made complaints, it’s up to you to get the company’s attention or send a Cease and Desist letter (or both).

Trademark infringement and counterfeit laws get blurry overseas.

It’s so difficult to take legal action against overseas entities that counterfeiting has become a legitimate, trillion-dollar industry.

Take Disney, for example. Disney is notoriously protective of its brand and anyone coming close to imitating it in the West will receive a cease and desist letter or trademark infringement claim very quickly. In China, on the other hand…

Anyone can make an Amazon account, and plenty of sellers and vendors are overseas. Sending a Cease and Desist letter to an overseas seller profile is a more complicated process than normal. Sometimes the trademark process can’t help either unless other countries were designated in trademark registration, giving Amazon hijackers a comfortable amount of space.

You’re dealing with professionals.

If you’re lucky, you’re dealing with a single bad actor who will move on after you play whack-a-mole with the handful of accounts they have. But make no mistake – there are entire teams of scammers out there, some with employees on payroll and years of experience in exploiting sellers on Amazon. Some even hijack Amazon’s products on Amazon!

If you’re selling products from an overseas vendor and aren’t brand registered, you’re likely not the only seller. It’s not unheard of for vendors to do business with fraudsters. That’s not to say they’re in on it – many just can’t keep tabs on every single one of their sellers. But if the Amazon hijacker has language and locality on their side, it’s a lot easier for them to frame you as the counterfeit to the vendor, or at least plead their case enough to get away with what they’re doing.

How to Deal with Amazon HijackersPhoto by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash1) Gather Evidence.

In order to ensure your report is successful, be sure you have all the evidence you need to show exactly what you’re dealing with. Here’s what Amazon expects when you report a seller for policy violations:

The store or business name of the seller you are reportingThe ASIN or ISBN of the item’s detail page and the product titleThe marketplaces for which the violation has occurredA concise explanation of the violation based on the policySupporting documentation (for example, order IDs, related messaging, or receipts)

Those last two are a bit vague despite being the most important. Save URLs of listings and screenshot what they look like. Feel free to highlight areas where fraud or imitation is apparent in photos or text. For example, if you have a private label product and the Amazon seller is claiming to sell the same product, save images detailing this (e.g. logos or anywhere in their Amazon listing that uses your own brand name).

Screenshot any messages or emails if the seller sent threatening messages.

Save comparable images of their Amazon listing and yours and note the dates when you collected this info – you can include the clock at the corner of your computer screen in your screenshots to be completely safe.

2) Reach out to the unauthorized seller.

Once you’ve gathered everything you need, you can contact the seller without the risk of losing any evidence. Do not skip this before reporting to Amazon or reaching out to Amazon support, because they will ask you to do so if you haven’t. Additionally, record your communication with them as further evidence. Lastly, any communication you do without a lawyer or representative should be done with your buyer account instead of your Amazon seller account.

How you reach out to them depends on the nature of your case and your brand:

Sending a Cease and Desist letter to the seller is your best bet. You don’t have to anticipate going to court any time soon, it’s just a useful measure that makes your case go up in terms of urgency, or best case intimidates the hijacker enough to stop what they’re doing on their own. You also don’t have to hire a lawyer to send a Cease and Desist letter, but it’s recommended you do to ensure it’s legally valid and no mistakes are made.

If the former isn’t an option, message the seller directly. Do not send them all of your evidence. The goal here isn’t to tip your hand, it’s to let them know exactly what they’re doing and you gave them a warning before reporting. Also, be sure to keep a stern but non-emotional tone. It’s tempting to chew them out for the financial losses they’re causing, but you need to be sure you have no potential missteps or overreactions on your side.

Lastly, if the seller has more than one Amazon listing that hijacks yours, be sure to note the ASINs of all of them individually. This ensures each one is documented and there’s no grey area up for dispute.

Here’s an example message:

To whom it may concern at [Seller Account Name],

This is a formal warning to remove listing [ASIN Here] and cease [Violations Here] before your account is suspended. We have gotten [Exact Number Here] sellers permanently removed from Amazon in the past for doing exactly what you’re doing, and we do not take this behavior lightly.

You have [Exact Number Here] business days to remove [ASIN Here] before we take legal action and your entire seller account on Amazon is permanently removed.

This is your first and final warning.

Generally, 2-3 business days is a good timeframe to give, but it’s up to you. If you haven’t reported a seller in the past before, feel free to make that part up!

3) Report the Amazon Hijacker

If you’re not a Registered Brand, you’ll need to fill out this form. You can also email seller-performance@amazon.com with a subject line like “Report a Violation: [Nature of your case]” e.g. “Report a Violation: Counterfeit Listing.” This may be less effective if you do so with an email not linked to your seller account.

If you are a Brand Owner, go to seller central dashboard and log in to your account. Once logged in, click on “Report A Trademark Violation” under the “Actions” tab. From there, you’ll require roughly the same information as above, but the process will be a lot more straightforward and likely faster. Once you have two successful violations against sellers, you’ll be given “project zero” protection, which will make it easier for you to protect your brand and report sellers in the future.

If your entire account was hacked, you have a few options. First, you can still email seller-performance@amazon.com and include any information you have to verify your identity and the fact that the account was originally yours.

You can also report your hacked account from a buyer account (make a new one if needed). There are two ways you can do this:

Through the customer service portal. You’ll be directed to a chatbot first, but once you’re connected with a customer service representative you can give them all of your evidence and explain your situation.By reporting them as a verified purchaser. To do this, you’ll have to test buy a product from the seller (their competing listing or your hijacked one should work). Report the product as a counterfeit and repeat the same steps mentioned from there.Leaving a bad review/answering questions noting they’re a fraud as a verified purchaser. After you test buy from them, go beyond reporting to leave a warning to other buyers and increase the chance of multiple reports being made.

Some general advice no matter how you make a report to Amazon:

Though you want as much evidence as possible, keep your email/message short. You shouldn’t need more than 3-4 sentences to state your purpose of reporting.Focus on what’s important from Amazon’s perspective as a company – the policies being violated. As flustered as you may be, it’s important to stay on track to ensure your case gets dealt with in a timely manner.

Here are the policies that Amazon looks out for in their words to include within your messaging:

Provide Accurate Information to Amazon and Amazon CustomersAct Fairly Without Misusing Amazon’s Features and ServicesNot Try to Damage Other Sellers, Listings, or RatingsNot Try to Influence Ratings, Feedback, and ReviewsNot Send Unsolicited or Inappropriate MessagesNot Attempt to Contact Customers Except Using the Buyer-Seller Messaging PlatformNot Try to Misuse the Amazon Sales ProcessNot Operate More Than One Sales Account on Amazon Fraudulently4) Monitor & Wait

Though it can be stressful, keep in mind it takes time for Amazon to investigate your case. Having clear-cut evidence and all your information up front should prevent any unnecessary delays, but you’ll likely need to wait for 2 business days for any response. Additionally, Amazon does not disclose what action they decide to take after they’ve investigated.

In the meanwhile, check the hijacker’s page and listings to monitor the situation. You may see that their listings are taken down, were changed according to policies, and so on.

If the listing and/or seller account was not taken down within a week or two, continue documenting their policy violations with screenshots and dates. If the seller has stopped hijacking your brand image or listings but was not terminated, keep an eye on their account to ensure they don’t revert back to policy-violating behavior at any point in the future.

ConclusionPhoto by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Amazon is a great resource as a side business or full-blown career, but it can be dangerous and complex as well. As an Amazon seller, you always want to make sure your account stays protected from hijackers and scammers who might try to imitate or copy listings. With this information, you will ensure that your evidence is valid and clear, you did everything Amazon wants you to do before reporting, and you’ll have the best chance at getting results.

If your brand is dealing with persistent and damaging counterfeits, hijacking, or other unauthorized selling on Amazon, it may be time to consult with a full-service Amazon ad agency. Our team of experts give Amazon sellers more direct representation and prevent hijacking from hurting your brand in addition to helping with other parts of your store like optimizing your listings, running ad campaigns, and more.

6 Hidden Ways to Optimize Amazon Listing & Rank Results

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Optimized listings on Amazon are easily discoverable in search results, have high click-through rates (CTR), have high conversion rates, and get more sales as a result. It sounds simple enough to start selling on Amazon, right?

Wrong.

95% of Amazon sellers fail within the first 12 months. Product listing optimization on Amazon in 2022 requires a whole new set of strategies and tips to rank in search results. These 6 steps for listing optimization will help you go beyond the basics to boost your rankings and ensure you stay in the top 5% this year.

Optimization =! Best Practices

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You’ve likely heard the importance of things like relevant keywords and product images for your Amazon listing. Most how-to’s focus on keyword optimization, product title, and bullet points for Amazon listing optimization. These are good tips that result in good product listings, but good Amazon listings don’t sell.

The truth is, most advice out there is too vague to be helpful, and some tips (even from Amazon itself!) are plain wrong. They’re not telling you what makes a good listing great, they’re only telling you what the starting standard is. Not exactly the definition of “optimized,” is it?

If you haven’t gotten started with some search engine optimization basics like search terms and backend keywords for your Amazon listing, tackle those areas first before starting these 6 steps. If you’re already aware of common best practices, you can use these 6 hidden steps for Amazon listing optimization to make sure you’re in the 5% of successful professional sellers in 2022.

Step 1: Stand Out in Product Categories with External Traffic

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The external traffic you bring influences how optimized Amazon’s algorithm considers your listing and should play a key role in your Amazon SEO strategy. 

Why is that? Firstly, impressions carry more weight in the a10 algorithm. A10 isn’t like other search engines. The current version of Amazon’s search engine algorithm is a10, and the biggest changes between the a9 and a10 algorithms all have to do with how much more a10 uses “credibility” to determine listing rankings. Impressions play a big role in how the algorithm determines your listing’s credibility.

Secondly, all of your competitors are optimizing their product listing for organic, on-site sales. They’re buying up Sponsored Product Ads, testing search terms, and doing practically anything else they can on Amazon to out-rank you in your product category. Taking your strategy offsite and on TikTok brings in more sales from areas with less competition, and the traffic makes you stand out as an Amazon seller. Many sellers have even used apps like TikTok to make their Amazon product Internet Famous.

You don’t necessarily have to start setting up a Google Ad to get it either: Amazon listings can get external traffic through social media, blog posts, influencer marketing, and more.

Even if you have your own website, you should consider directing customers to Amazon’s online marketplace. The boost in Amazon SEO isn’t enough for you to merge your Amazon marketing strategy with your other sales funnels, keep in mind that conveniences like Prime Shipping could increase customer satisfaction and provide the good customer service required for even more revenue long-term.

Step 2: Don’t Follow (Some) Amazon Listing Optimization Guidelines to Keep Relevant Keywords

To be clear, you should follow all of Amazon’s policies. Don’t throw out the Amazon seller rulebook and expect to do well; this is only referring to best practices that have some wiggle room.  

Which listing looks optimized to you?

Source: Gorilla ROI

One breaks best practices to selectively add more than generic keywords in the title, bullet points, and product description, and add more descriptive terms in the title and bullet point section. The other followed guidelines.

These guidelines help make listings more uniform and basic so the site isn’t a mess and shoppers can make easy comparisons. They shouldn’t be ignored entirely but as Gorilla ROI points out, there comes a point where short and sweet won’t optimize your Amazon product listing or boost your click-through rate.

Don’t stuff all the keywords you can into your product title, product description, and bullet points but consider making thoughtful exceptions for important keywords and descriptive terms for key product features.

Step 3: Use Product Images, Video, and A+ Content for Emotional Appeal

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A lot more goes into product image optimization and visual content than the right image frame and white background. Your Amazon listing should help your target audience visualize your product’s features. Product images, video, and A+ content optimize your Amazon product listing by helping potential buyers visualize:

Dimensions – how big/small is it? Even if you add this in descriptions, shoppers should be able to roughly estimate through your photos.Materials – especially important for products like clothing.Different Angles – what does the back of it look like? What about close up, or further away?Usage – what does the fit look like on a model? How would my child interact with the toy? How can this tool be used?Benefits – this is not the same as product features. Use simple text and/or imagery to convey the results your product achieves for the buyer.

Whatever aspect(s) your main image can’t cover, your additional images and video should. Guidelines like “don’t include props” might prevent you from providing context in your main image. The rules for optimizing product images and video beyond main images are much more lenient and give you the freedom to add this context to your listings while still following site standards.

Use A+ content to visually summarize. A+ content (formerly Enhanced Brand Content) is not indexed so keyword rankings aren’t important. It’s especially useful for additional images and charts that help visually summarize your product description to the buyer. It’s a largely underutilized area of listings that isn’t as important as things like bullet points but can give your listing an advantage.

Step 4: Pay Attention to Your Q&A Section

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How embarrassing would it be to have high-quality images, good bullet points, and perfect promotional messages that catch a potential buyer’s eye, only for them to scroll down to the Q&A section and see this:

Source: Twitter.com

Unmanaged Q&A sections look unprofessional to potential customers searching through your product description. Nothing is stopping previous buyers from giving incomplete or inaccurate answers or negative feedback. Don’t underestimate what this can do to conversion rates or your likelihood of a bad product review because a buyer was misled by incorrect answers.

All of these scenarios affect your product detail page, which affects your product ranking. Keep an eye on the questions that pop up for your product so you can answer them properly before anyone else does.

Step 5: Base Your Prices on Your Listing’s Strength

To optimize your product click-through rate, base your prices on how strong and optimized your listing is. A brand new listing without the credibility of good reviews and ratings won’t be able to increase rankings quickly if it’s priced just as high as established ones and won’t entice potential buyers as much if the product is not unique or is in a highly competitive category.

Many sellers start out at a net loss and slowly increase prices as the reviews, ratings, and traffic start coming in. This pricing strategy does help optimize your product listing, but it’s calculated risk sellers do with a firm understanding of their numbers. It’s also a sacrifice that not every seller can afford to make.

Regardless, if you’ve put in the effort towards listing optimization and it’s still not getting the traction it needs to rank well, consider whether your prices are a factor keeping people from clicking and how much room you have to change them. In many cases, a slight decrease in profit margins is all that’s needed to bring in sales and traffic to your product pages that pay off several times over in the long run.

Step 6: Use Ads Regularly for Amazon Listing Optimization (and Keyword Research)

PPC ads are one of the first strategies mentioned for Amazon listing optimization. Sponsored Product Ads are a must for making strong Amazon product listings and should be seen as much more than a temporary boost in traffic and sales. With the right setup, they can be used to harvest keywords or even steal traffic directly from a competitor’s product pages.

The biggest mistake a seller can make is not considering ads as a continuous part of their overall selling strategy. There are a few reasons why this is true:

If you use Sponsored Product ads to find keywords, doing so only once or too rarely won’t provide optimal results. You won’t be able to keep up with changing trends in search terms and relevant keywords, and you won’t be able to refine your frontend and backend keywords enough.Ads can boost your ranking in search results even after the campaign ended, but this boost fades over time. Regular campaigns provide a consistent boost in search visibility in Amazon’s search results.Sponsored Ads are an affordable method to keep your product listings from falling behind in dynamic and competitive markets (and few sellers are not in a dynamic, competitive market). Even small campaigns can give important insight into what audiences to target and how to target them best or alert you to changing trends if you run them more regularly.

The biggest reason why you should make ads a regular part of your Amazon product listings optimization strategy is in plain view on search results pages – just look at how many are Sponsored Ads.

Some see Amazon ads as a pay-to-win strategy because of this. They’re not entirely wrong, but it’s more accurate to see ads as a necessary part of selling on Amazon because your listing optimization will always be one step behind competitors who are using ads for maximum results – and most sellers are.

Strategic ad campaigns are important to enhance product discoverability, but the keyword here is “strategic.” To make sure your ads are set up in the best manner possible to help reach your goals, you need a lot of time to learn how Amazon ads work and how to optimize your ad spend. It’s possible to do it on your own if you’re starting out as a small Amazon Marketplace seller with only a couple of products, but most Registered Brands and dedicated entrepreneurs hire Amazon advertising agencies that have the time and experience to deliver make the best ads and optimization service for their Amazon product listings.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there’s a lot more to optimizing your product listings than typical SEO tasks like keyword research. The highest-ranking listings on Amazon incorporate these 6 steps into their optimization strategy, and if you’re not seeing the results you want, it’s time to revisit your listing and consider implementing them to optimize the lesser-known factors that influence your ranking in the algorithm. 

There’s a lot more to Amazon listing optimization than we could fit into this article too – like optimizing Amazon keywords for mobile devices or brand registry – so check out our other articles about Amazon ads and tips for sellers for more helpful guides and inspiration.

The Best Time to Post on TikTok, According to Data

Does it matter what time you post on TikTok? The numbers show when you upload makes a difference. When you post on TikTok isn’t as important as when you post on Instagram or other social media platforms, but finding the best time to post on TikTok can still be an advantage that helps boost your engagement rates.

So what time should I post on TikTok, then?

If we gave you a simple answer, we’d be giving you the wrong information. The right time to post depends on several different factors, and what day you post makes a difference too. When to post on TikTok for maximum views isn’t the same for everyone, but we made it as simple and easy as possible to figure out.

In this article, we compiled tons of information to help you determine what the best time to post on TikTok is on average, and how to figure out the best time to post for your account specifically. You’ll also learn three important tips about your posting schedule to ensure your content gets as much engagement as possible.

The Best Times to Post on TikTok According to Peak Posting Times

Not a lot of unique or fresh data exists on hours of peak engagement on TikTok compared to platforms like Instagram or Facebook, and the majority of sources trying to find the best time to post on TikTok cite the same study done in 2021. We compiled data from three separate sources and combined it with our own professional experience to get a better look at what the best time to post truly is.

There’s more than one best time to post on TikTok. In Pacific Standard Time (PST), the best times to post on TikTok are 4 am – 6 am and 9 am-2 pm on weekdays. On average, your TikToks are most likely to perform best when posted early in the morning (6 am – 9 am) or midday (11 am – 2 pm) of whichever timezone you’re in.

According to Later, 1 pm PST tends to be the best time to post during any weekday, but other sources found that TikTok videos posted early in the morning performed especially well, with some sweet time spots occurring midday or late at night.

After compiling all the data, we concluded that morning and midday are both peak times likely because people often log onto a social media platform when they wake up and at lunch.

Posting early morning or midday is a safe rule of thumb unless your audience lives in a completely different timezone than you or if they’re in a demographic with unique activity rates. Not sure if that’s you? No worries, we’ll get into that later on.

The Best Days to Post on TikTok, Statistically

While the best times to post on TikTok globally are during the week, certain days result in better engagement than others. The latest data shows that Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays are the best days to post for overall views and likes, while Mondays have the lowest viewership.

Here’s what all that information looks like put together in one posting schedule (for any time zone):

Are Averages the Best Times for You to Post?

These averages make for a great starting point if you have a new account or less than 100 followers. Otherwise, it’s important to tailor your posting schedule to what best fits your target audience, especially if you’re using TikTok to make money or promote something.

Where your audience lives, their age and their interests can make your optimal posting times on TikTok completely different from the average. Once you have over 100 followers, TikTok gives you some helpful analytics data to make a posting schedule better suited to your account specifically.

When to Post on TikTok According to Your Target Audience

Mornings and middays are generally the best time to post, but what if you have a global audience? Sometimes, you can have several peak hours and days because your viewers are in different time zones. Once we factor these time zones in, making morning posts might not be a good rule of thumb for you like it is for others.

Your TikTok Videos May Have a Global Audience

Not targeting the right audiences is one of the biggest marketing mistakes you can make on TikTok, and this is true for regular users just as much as influencers or businesses. In other words, if you want to find the best time to post for your account, we need to find out more about your followers and make a content strategy unique to your account.

What is a Target Audience, and How Do I Know What My Target Audiences Are?

A target audience is the group of people you are trying to reach with your account or content, and there may be more than one. For example, if your TikTok channel covers a variety of interests or genres, you probably have a few target audiences in multiple time zones. You can also organize target audiences by region, age, or gender, so if you have a large following in both the US and the UK, you can consider them two separate target groups.

You can figure out your target audiences by looking at who is already watching your videos and following you. TikTok has useful analytics tools to help you determine this information, so take a look at your account’s “Interactions” tab to see where your viewers are coming from.

If your audience is spread out, prioritize the 2-3 regions where you get the most engagement to find the best time to post.

Using TikTok Analytics to Find the Best Time to Post on TikTok

Where is your audience located? Depending on how many followers you have, the answer is in the analytics on your profile page. The data TikTok’s analytics section provides on your previous uploads and followers activity can help you determine TikTok posting times that get maximum engagement.

For regular accounts:Go to your Profile and tap the Settings menu on the upper right corner of your screenSelect “Creator Tools,” and in that menu, press the “Analytics” tabThe Analytics tab has a few key insights that are useful to determine when you should be posting videos. The two most important for figuring out the best time to post videos are “Content” and “Followers.”

In the “Content” section, it will show your trending videos. Select a specific video and jot down the date and time you posted it along with its number of views, likes, comments, and shares.

Once you have this info for multiple videos, you’ll start to get a good idea of what times and days are working best for your account to determine the best time to post. You can also scroll down to “Video views by region” to understand what types of videos you upload are best for specific audiences.

In the “Followers” section, scroll down to “Top territories.” This section shows the top five regions where most of your audience resides.

Knowing your audience’s location can ensure you know the best time to post according to their time zones. Note: Access to this analytics information depends on how many followers you have (you need at least 100).

Take some time to record and organize this information in a table or spreadsheet. As you continue to post new videos, you’ll get a clearer and clearer idea of the best time to post to maximize your views.

For Business Accounts:

TikTok Business Accounts or a Tiktok Pro Account can get more details on specific uploads and their follower demographics. For example, a Business Account or Pro Account can go to the “Content” section and get detailed information on all of their posts rather than just their trending posts.

Using a Business or Pro Account makes it easier to determine what the best time to post is (or more likely a few sweet time spots) and what days work best for your upload schedule.

Though having a Business or TikTok Pro Account makes this data analysis easier, it’s still a lot of information to process, especially if you’re a busy professional. Consulting a TikTok advertising agency can ensure you still get this valuable information and optimized results without putting in the time and energy. An agency also can help you improve even more aspects of your account besides finding the best time to post your TikTok videos like increasing your average watch time or video performance.

How Often You Post on TikTok Matters, Too

Just like most other social media platforms, how often you post on TikTok is also important if you want to boost engagement. For example, a person who makes TikTok posts consistently throughout the week might have their videos picked up by the TikTok algorithm into more ForYouPages than someone who posts less than once a week, even if the person posting once a week has more followers.

Frequency matters because of how TikTok’s algorithm distributes content, and it plays an even bigger role in content performance than finding the best time to post.

How Often Should You Post on TikTok?

Posting a TikTok video every day is a good idea for brands and aspiring creators trying to become TikTok famous. If that’s too much for you, post on TikTok a minimum of three times per week to get the upload the consistency TikTok’s algorithm likes. Try to space out your posts evenly throughout the week to maximize this algorithm benefit.

Uploading videos throughout the week also ensures that you can target multiple time zones if you have more than one TikTok audience. For example, you can upload one of your videos at the best time for a specific region and target a different audience next time.

Can You Post Too Much on TikTok?

Though multiple posts a week and consistently uploading is a good strategy to get more views on TikTok, there is such a thing as posting too much. If you’re uploading videos ten times per day nearly every day, you’re going to start overwhelming your followers, and they’ll be less likely to see everything you upload. The decrease in views per upload tells the algorithm to stop putting your videos in the ForYouPage as often and damages your ability to get more engagement and followers in the long run.

Tips for Posting Consistently

The only people who get away with posting more than three times a day already have millions of followers on their TikTok account, so unless that’s you, keep these tips in mind:

Try to space out your posts evenly throughout the week and avoid bombarding people’s feeds with videos all at once.Keep it to 1-3 uploads a day and post them at least two hours apart from each other.If your content needs to be broken into more than one video, consider waiting a day or two until uploading the second part. You can always add the second video in a pinned comment on your first to make sure people see it, and the suspense you create can actually boost engagement and even get you more followers.Making an Upload Schedule for Your PostsFree Ways to Make a TikTok Post Schedule

Now that you know when to post on TikTok, it’s time to make a publishing schedule for your posts. Decide which days you want to post and what times you’ll be uploading each video to stay organized and ensure that all of your uploads are spaced out evenly.

You can schedule videos by drawing a table, making a spreadsheet, or using free scheduling tools like Later. Scheduling tools for social media can make the process faster and easier, especially if you post often.

Affordable Marketing Tools for Creators and Businesses

Besides the above example, there are also paid scheduling apps that include additional analytics information and tools to optimize when you post on Tiktok videos.

If you have a smaller account and audience, it might not be worth spending money on professional platforms and TikTok analytics from your profile will be enough. However, if you have over 100,000 followers, are an influencer, or use a TikTok Business Account, affordable marketing tools for small budgets like this can help you get even better results.

When to Post on TikTok in 2022: Important Tips

1) Check Your Analytics Regularly

It’s important to keep in mind that when your followers are watching has likely changed and will continue to change throughout the year – especially once you start getting more followers. Knowing this, don’t research your target audiences once and call it a day. Check your TikTok analytics at least once a month (ideally once a week) to see what’s changed and adjust when you post accordingly to keep your TikTok engagement rates steady. Make sure to keep track of any changes so you can gather insights on your audiences over time.

2) Stay Ahead of Updates or Algorithm Changes

TikTok’s algorithm also changes any time the company decides to update it and understanding the platform’s algorithm is important when figuring out what and when to post. Though we can’t know all of the specifics, TikTok often gives insights into how the algorithm works or when it makes changes to the algorithm. Be sure to read up on these updates to check and see if your posting strategy or TikTok content needs to change.

3) High-Performing Content Will Always Win

What you post on TikTok is more important than when you post, and that’s never going to change! Make sure your videos are creative and you’re making engaging content – something that your audiences will want to watch. If you’ve optimized your posting times and factored in time difference but still aren’t getting the results you want, dive deeper into your TikTok analytics. Fine-tune your content strategy with some inspiration from quality content made by other creators for ideas on high-performing content, and make sure you’re using relevant hashtags to increase discoverability.

Conclusion

The best times to post on TikTok depends largely on your target audiences and when they’re most likely to be using the app. Additionally, making sure you’re not posting too little or too much throughout the week will help give your videos a boost in the algorithm.

TikTok is best used as a tool to engage with your audience and share quality content that’s relevant,  interesting, and engaging. Posting at the right time is one part of this, but making sure your videos delight your audience is essential to making your videos discoverable and getting more traction. Keep track of your TikTok analytics, posting time, and post performance to see what’s working best for you!

Notable Viral Marketing Examples to Inspire Your 2022 Strategy

Is there really such a thing as a strategy that can make campaigns go viral? Well, yes and no. The topic of viral marketing is not straightforward; that’s why we’ll uncover its colorful past, present, and uncertain future as we head into 2022.

What is Viral Marketing?

The definition of viral marketing is a strategy in which a person, group, or company creates content designed to inspire a large number of people to share, engage with, and talk about it (a.k.a. go viral). The content can obtain a large audience rapidly and without paying in the same manner as traditional advertising because the audience increases its reach organically.

What is Viral Advertising?

Like viral marketing, viral advertising aims to encourage large numbers of people to share content organically to promote a product or service, while viral marketing campaigns can encompass a wider variety of objectives.

Examples of viral marketing and advertisingWhat does good viral marketing look like?

Do you remember the Fyre Festival? It might be a textbook example of how to not set up a large event, but before the Internet was making “fyre” memes about its failure, it had one of the best viral marketing campaigns of its time. In fact, the only reason why millions of people were tuned into its disastrous outcome was its social media campaigns were so successful, and they remain a brilliant example of viral marketing.

Fyre Festival’s viral marketing technique cleverly combined the power of influencers and human curiosity. Several noteworthy social media influencers – mostly Instagram models – gave the festival an initial audience to start with. They all posted a blank orange square with captions like “SO excited!!! #fyrefestival,” and the festival’s promotional video featured the orange square as a thumbnail.

This quickly got tons of people to pay attention simply because they wanted to know what the orange square on their feed was about and why Bella Hadid found it so exciting. The orange square became a meme of sorts as users reposted it to make their own followers perplexed and curious. Soon enough, entire feeds were covered in orange squares and the Fyre Festival was being talked about by millions around the world. Maybe if their marketing team was in charge of the festival, it wouldn’t have flopped so hard.

What does a good viral campaign look like?

Old Spice created one of the most successful viral marketing campaigns to date. Their ad featuring actor Isaiah Mustafa was so well done that his character became the company’s mascot and a long-lasting theme for their advertisements. The original commercial “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” aired in 2010, yet over a decade later, an astonishing amount of Americans still remember its iconic lines and cite it as one of the best commercials of all time.

Behind the scenes, Old Spice targeted “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” very strategically on channels where couples were most likely to be watching TV together. Though the team probably didn’t anticipate just how successful the viral campaign would be, it was intentionally designed to be a cultural phenomenon. The content was memorable, funny, and compelling, but most importantly, its format and Mustafa’s lines were replicable. In other words, it was very meme-able. The ad reached far beyond its original viewer base wherever and whenever it was referenced.

YouTube gave the viral advertisement an additional 60 million views. Imagine making an ad so iconic, it starts generating its own income. Old Spice took advantage of the video-sharing platform even further in a lesser-known but equally-clever interactive campaign called “The Response,” in which Mustafa individually responded to comments from users on platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook in over 180 videos.

Sales of Old Spice body wash increased 60% that year.

Real-World Viral Marketing & Advertising Stunts

Old Spice and Fyre Festival serve as straightforward examples of good viral marketing, but make no mistake: there’s a lot of different strategies within viral marketing that aren’t as direct. Guerilla marketing and viral marketing, for example, often go hand-in-hand.

Guerilla marketing is a promotional strategy in which companies use unconventional and/or unannounced stunts to reach and engage with their audiences.

Frozen Bananas for Sale

Take this Reddit Post from 2013, for example:

The Reddit user is not a marketer or influencer. They saw a frozen banana food stand while walking around London and found it so bizarre and funny that they figured it could earn some upvotes – which is exactly what Netflix was hoping for when they put it there.

How does a random banana stand advertise Netflix in any way? It’s a reference to the show Arrested Development, and the Reddit user’s post proves how and why it works as a viral marketing strategy. Placing a show reference in a busy city seems subtle, but “sophisticated” is a more accurate description. Netflix’s stunt proves two concepts that are key to modern viral marketing strategies:

In the age of social media, your audience has an audienceLess obvious advertising =! less effective advertising 

Think about it: do you think anyone would have found this as funny and awesome if Netlfix ran ads about it? How many people do you know that would walk past something like a frozen banana stand and not take a picture or tell any of their friends? It was only a matter of time before Burt’s Frozen Banana Stand appeared on every major platform. “There’s always money in a banana stand.”    

IT’s (alleged) pre-movie marketing

It’s important to note that to this day, the producers of the 2017 horror film IT have consistently denied causing the Creepy Clown Craze of 2016. To be fair, it quickly became a problem – police were getting involved, embassies were warning citizens of potential clown dangers, and Mcdonald’s had to stop using its mascot for a while. Plus, even if New Line Cinema had (allegedly) sent out a few rogue clowns at any point, they certainly weren’t the core of the craze. It went viral in the first place because putting on a clown costume is a very easy way to scare approximately 12% of the human population.

The timing is conspicuously in-line with the buildup to IT’s release. Also, viral marketing stunts were a verified component of the film’s promotion. In Melbourne, thousands of Australians were treated to red balloons on multiple street drains. They were accompanied by “IT IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK” neatly spray-painted onto the pavement. 

It was clever and achieved its goal of creeping people out while creating interest in the film. And even if IT had nothing to do with the clown craze, both stunts combined helped IT earn over $317 million – hundreds of millions more than any other scary movie that year.

Viral Marketing Before the Internet

If history can borrow the term “viral marketing,” The Sun may have had one of the best campaigns of all time. The Sun was an emerging New York newspaper and the workplace of reporter John Locke in 1835. Locke had a bone to pick with companies like The Atlantic for publishing absurd articles, like Thomas Dick’s “celestial science” publishings. They were about the 21 trillion biblical creatures he calculated were on the moon (based on the population of England – very scientific), so it’s not hard to understand why Locke called it an “outrage upon science.”

Locke decided to mock the media status quo by writing a fake story in The Sun, using its sensationalism to provide the paper with more readers in the process. He pretended to be famous astronomer John Herschel, proclaiming that a new telescope had allowed him to see unicorns, beavers, and “Vespertilio-homo” (Latin for bat-men, literally) on the moon.

Locke’s stunt worked. The Sun rapidly obtained a massive audience for its time as people scrambled to get their hands on each new editorial for the latest details on the moon batmen – Locke somehow made The Sun go viral with nothing more than a printing press. After six editorials, The Sun admitted it was all fake and the Great Moon Hoax was officially over. The story became a cult phenomenon, arguably one of the first examples of viral marketing, and possibly the first meme; it was common to see The Sun’s depictions of moon people framed in people’s houses. Even the astronomer Locke impersonated thought it was funny until he realized how annoying it is to be a living meme.

The Sun maintained much of its audience from Locke’s hoax and continued on as a popular non-satirical newspaper until 1950.

Not all marketing that goes viral is viral marketing.

Not all viral campaigns come from viral marketing. In fact, it’s more common for ads and marketing stunts to go viral unintentionally and for the wrong reasons, usually due to one or more of three things:

ControversyCountercultureCringe-worthy ContentControversy

Brands trying to advertise aren’t the right messenger for social issues, so one misstep can lead to a controversy that goes viral. Viral infamy from this strategy is so common it’s become documented research with quantifiably poor results, but for some reason that hasn’t stopped big brands from creating their own controversy for the world to see.

A recent example is Tesco’s 2021 UK ad for the holidays. It was intended to be a “lighthearted take” on the pandemic-related struggles we’ve experienced this year.  Santa has his vaccine passport, allowing him to avoid quarantine and make it in time for Christmas. Queen played in the background. Everyone clapped.

The ad received over 5,000 complaints from the public to the Advertising Standards Authority, the second-highest record in its history.

Starbucks managed to gain an even larger amount of online hate when it made the #RaceTogether campaign to fight racial intolerance and “start a conversation” about ethnicity in America. They did indeed start a conversation – multiple, all over the Internet, about their corporate urge to cash in on a delicate topic.

Internet Counterculture

The wild west days of the Internet left behind a counterculture that remains strong within many online communities. A long list of companies accidentally come across Internet counterculture when their ad campaigns catch the attention of Reddit, Encyclopedia Dramatica, 4chan, and 8chan. In most cases, it’s because the campaign had a weakness that large numbers of people could collectively exploit for fun. Though it’s nowhere near as damaging as controversy, the wrong kind of attention from the Internet can completely ruin a campaign. 

Brands are becoming more aware of how organized these communities can be if they feel like it, but it was a tough learning curve throughout the past two decades. It took nearly a decade for businesses to learn to avoid polls in their marketing campaigns:

Any time viral messages call for interaction, there’s a chance this part of the Internet will remind them to be careful what they wish for. For example, SeaWorld probably should have thought harder about how polite the discussion was going to be in their #AskSeaWorld campaign on Twitter. LifeLock’s CEO should have considered that several people absolutely would try to steal his identity for years when he dared them to in his 2007 commercials. And how did a company like Coca-Cola not consider the possibilities when allowing people to custom-fill bottle labels?

Cringe-Worthy Content

Sometimes all it takes is an awkward delivery for a brand to be lambasted by the Internet. There’s nothing social media loves more than gathering around in the millions and collectively saying “Wow, that’s cringe.”

On the surface, it sounds like the most harmless form of negative viral attention. Professionals stuck in traditional marketing mindsets often make this mistake, and it costs them their brand reputation in the long run. On the Internet, being out of touch is a much bigger crime than being controversial or crude. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who remembers the Starbucks #RaceTogether campaign despite its heavy subject matter; the same cannot be said about Wendy’s 2018 “Like a Boss” commercial.

The reason why these campaigns are cringe-worthy isn’t just because a joke didn’t land or the message wasn’t conveyed well. It’s also the fact that the try-hard and/or outdated messaging proves to an ad-conscious demographic that these companies are trying to sell products to customers they don’t understand. 

Are Viral Campaigns Fading Away?

All of the noteworthy successful viral ad campaigns mentioned were launched several years ago. Of course, it would be helpful to get some more recent examples. The problem is, if you look up the top results for “viral marketing campaigns” or “viral ads” in 2021, you’ll get results like Coke’s “Real Magic” campaign holiday ad, or Fisher-Price’s “See toys everywhere” campaign. Does anyone remember these? The bar for “viral” seems to be getting lower.

What qualifies as going viral?

Some try to slap quantifiable views like “5 million” onto the definition of viral, but in truth, viral content isn’t quantifiable – the manner in which it becomes a cultural phenomenon makes it near-impossible and also pointless to count views. When something goes viral, you know because everyone knows.

Content with that kind of virality doesn’t seem to come from strategies like it did a few years ago. Why is that?

Digital Marketing Killed Viral Marketing Techniques

The landscape in which viral marketing found its sweet spot in social media marketing no longer exists.

The number of social media platforms we use has increased.The content we consume on them is personalized more than it is popular.Our online communities have gotten less communal.Our perspective on brands and advertising has soured.

Businesses overstayed their welcome online both on social media and in digital ads. They desensitized people by advertising too much, they used authenticity as a marketing message instead of a value, and they made “relatability” untrustworthy over time. When paired with the natural evolution of social media, it was a death blow to strategies that worked well just a few years ago.

If people don’t like brands enough to give them word-of-mouth advertising, forget going viral.

Viral Marketing Campaign Strategy in 2022

It wasn’t entirely honest to say no ads went viral in 2021, but the only true candidate has a complicated backstory. According to TikTok, was an error, not an ad – allegedly.

The “error” was an accidental mix-up of the creatives for an Amazon ad and a random video. This resulted in random, slightly horrific yet slightly funny audio with games like Roblox being played on screen, ending with a link to Amazon for perplexed viewers to click. It got millions of views on TikTok and within days, everyone online was wondering what on Earth this ad was, who made it, and why.

Glitch, or successful viral marketing campaign?

The problem is, this explanation doesn’t make any sense. The link in the ad was to the search term “revealhome1,” not a product or store, meaning no specific thing or seller on Amazon was being promoted. Plus, no one ever came forward as the original owner of the “random video.” You’d think the creator would want to take credit for it after it accidentally managed to outperform professional ads with a fraction of the budget despite having no product, right? 

Here’s a conspiracy theory: The link is a search term on Amazon because the advertiser was a rouge seller using search arbitrage to cheat their way up in search results (or maybe on the Amazon Internet Famous Page). And of course, TikTok wouldn’t like to admit that a fraudulent advertiser had not only snuck onto the platform, but his unconventional tactics and chaotic editing also made one of the best viral campaigns in 2021.

New -Age “Cool” is Chaos

Chaotic editing is a method of creating content that invokes frantic, unsettling, but also humorous feelings. The videos or pictures use strange audio clips, and low-quality visuals as well as editing characterized by sudden, fast, and/or drastic changes that complete its “chaotic” feel. It’s not a new content style and lighter forms of it are all over the Internet – deep fried memes, for example – but gen z and TikTok have made chaotic editing more mainstream.

Take a look at the full video yourself to get an idea of what that looks and sounds like: it’s strange, but still somehow structured and purposeful. It’s exactly what makes a TikTok user curious enough to click a link, just like blank orange squares did on Instagram for Fyre Festival.

Perhaps it is really just a random glitch, but it deciphered the code to virality we seem to have been missing regardless:

In the age of social media, your audience has an audience.Less obvious advertising = more effective advertising.In an endless sea of information and ads, meaninglessness and chaos “gets it.”