August 2021 – A4 Team Your Marketing Force

Monthly Archives: August 2021

Getting products and services to appear online can make or break a business. Google is the answer to such a need. It is the largest search engine in the world, with more than 90% reach to online consumers and over 2 million websites. No wonder more than 7 million advertisers engage in Google Ads PPC.

Most small businesses and startups have a limited budget on pay-to-play to showcase their brand online. But the good news is, there are ways to showcase your products for free on Google, as noted by a digital marketing speaker Hong Kong. Even though they do not cost money, they can get your brand to Google images, Shopping, and more organically.

Begin with Google Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center is a Google property where you can reach hundreds of millions of people daily. These people are looking to buy products and services from brands and businesses. As an online marketplace, Google Merchant Center will connect you with the right customers at the right moment.

The first step is to create a Google account if you don’t have one. Afterward, you can now grow your business with Google Merchant Center. Head to merchants.google.com and follow the guide to identify how Google can help your business. Enter the URL of your eCommerce website and follow the simple steps to tell Google the information it needs about your business. You can now showcase your products for free on Google.

Complete Your Business Information

Your business name, store name, or website name will appear next to each product that you showcase for free on Google. But this is not enough to rank on Google searches. You will need to complete your business information to boost visibility.

With a Google My Business account, you get more than just a listing. You can boost reach and drive customer engagement for free. All you need to do is complete your business information. These include business categories or niches, contact numbers, email, operating hours, physical address or addresses of your stores, and URLs of your websites.

Integrate Your Third-Party Platform

Are you working with third-party platforms to promote your products online? Or do you have you build your business or eCommerce website? To further showcase your products on Google, you may need to integrate your third-party platforms with your Google Merchant account.

Linking your accounts can help Google understand your business more. It can then provide better services to your business and link third-party platforms. A social media agency Hong Kong also highlights the importance of linking your social media pages with Google Merchant. It is a way to build and sync interconnected online stores to boost visibility on Google searches. As a way to build up your online identity, it also provides merchant trust and quality signals.

Review Your Product Listings

You will also need to review your listings to better showcase your products for free on Google. Update them from time to time. Under published products, click a product title to see its details and tools. You can then edit and update them based on your preferences. You can also sync inventories across all programs.

If you are using Shopify, Google will automatically detect and import your updated product listing. But for social media Shops and other third-party platforms, you may need to do it manually. Most online searchers look for product ratings and reviews. According to a video marketing agency Hong Kong, the best way to showcase them on Google is to add short testimonial clips of happy customers.

Use the Merchant Center Flow to Help Google Understand Your Products

The Merchant Center Flow helps Google understand your products more. It will match your product information with the most relevant queries. First, you will need to verify your website. Then you will have to set up your shipping information for customers to know how long it will take for an item to reach them together with its delivery cost. If you are a seller from the United States, you will also need to set up the tax information for your business.

After Google identifies your website, it may automatically add your product listing on your Merchant account. All you need to do is to confirm the product entries. If you have less than 100 products on your list, Google recommends manually adding them. As such, you can configure the following data:

Brand Name
Manufacturer Part Number (MPN)
Strong product identifiers like Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)

From these data, Google will better understand your products and match them with the most relevant searches.

Through Google Merchant Center, you can also update your product attributes to specify color, condition, material, pattern, and size. You can also ensure uploading high-quality images to capture the customers’ attention.

Visibility

Google wants to ensure that a business provides the best customer experience. So, as a last step before the final review, it will ask you to see and agree with the terms and conditions of Google Policies. Afterward, you will just need to wait for an email as a go signal that you can showcase your products for free on Google.

Reference: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/378043

Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Video Marketing

A Half-Year Review of the Top Social Media Platforms

August 9, 2021 Alex Torres

There are 4.48 billion social media users around the world today. It means that 2/3 of the global population have at least one social media account. As such, brands and businesses focus on social media marketing. It is an essential key to success in promoting their products and services online. For many, social media is a way to connect to the world. According to a social media agency Hong Kong, it is also a place to find ideas and inspiration. That is why the marketing strategies in these online platforms are very different. First, you need to educate your target audience to give them ideas. Second, you also need to be creative in engaging and inspiring them.

There are so many social media platforms available online. The challenge for brands and businesses is choosing the right one. To help them make better decisions, here’s a half-year review of the top social media platforms.

CLUBHOUSE

The Clubhouse app is a social audio app launched last March 2020. A digital marketing speaker Hong Kong highlighted that it revolutionized the audio marketing industry. Other social media platforms tried to clone the app. The Clubhouse app was initially invite-only in iOS but has recorded 13 million downloads in less than a year. Today, it has enabled Android download and has opened its membership to the public. The audio chat app now has 20 million downloads. With 10 million monthly active users, Clubhouse is now worth $4 billion in a Series C round.

FACEBOOK

The king of social media has now grown to 2.895 billion monthly active users. Almost fifty percent of its members come from the Asia-Pacific region. Its quarterly revenue stands at $29,077 billion. A large part of the earnings came from Canada, Europe, and the United States. Facebook now focuses on AR and VR innovations. It is also adding features and tools for live broadcast and paid online events. By 09 August 2021, it will hold the first-ever movie premiere. With Facebook Pay being made available among 3^rd party platforms, this year may be a huge leap for Facebook paid services.

INSTAGRAM

Since Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012, it has become one of the most influential social media platforms globally. With a large number of millennials using the app, the platform switched from photo-sharing into photo-and-video-sharing. As of Q2 of 2021, Instagram has 1.386 billion monthly active users. Its revenue stands at $18.16 billion. At the beginning of 2021, Instagram introduced a “Professional Dashboard.” It houses all the features and tools a brand or business needs to manage an Instagram account. The platform has also integrated its Messaging API, allowing access to multiple Instagram pages.

The largest online network of professionals now has 774 million monthly active users. LinkedIn was also currently on track to generate $3.7 billion for this full year. A video marketing agency Hong Kong notes that LinkedIn posts with videos are 20x more likely to be shared than any other forms of posts. It may be the reason why the platform focuses mainly on enhancing LinkedIn Stories as of these days. It was introduced in late September 2020. Last January, LinkedIn enabled the automatic “follow” action and swipe up button to enhance its Stories features.

After reporting a series of consecutive growth for 11 quarters, Pinterest showed a slight decline in Q2 of 2021. It now has 454 million monthly active users. But its revenue grew to $613 million, on track with a growth of 125% year over year. Pinterest has noted that the decline is due to the easing restrictions on physical stores. Brick-and-mortar shops are slowly coming back. It makes shoppers shift back to store visits instead of online searches. As such, Pinterest now focuses on expanding its virtual try-ons. Initially, the visual search engine enabled it among makeup products from big global brands. Recently, it enabled a virtual test drive for Volkswagen. Pinterest has also added more ways for creators to earn money. These include product tags and paid partnerships.

SNAPCHAT

Snapchat now has 293 million monthly active users. Its revenue now stands at $982 million. It is a solid increase in both account and profit growth. After a shaky period resulting from the launch of Instagram Stories, the messaging app is now recovering. It has seen significant growth in India after the TikTok ban. Recently, the platform launched the “Open Your Snapchat” video campaign in key cities of the world. It also introduced the “Campaign Lab,” a hub for creating Snap Ads.

TIKTOK

TikTok is a Chinese short video clip app that recently made waves around the world. Because of the rapid growth among its users, many social media platforms cloned the app. There are Reels from Facebook, Shorts from YouTube, and Spotlight from Snapchat. TikTok became the first non-Facebook app to hit 3 billion downloads. It is estimated to have 689 million monthly active users today. Its current revenue now passed $2.5 billion. Thus, it became one of the non-gaming apps with a revenue greater than $1 billion since 2014. TikTok has greeted the world with a whirlwind of short amateur videos. Because of the fun and interactive elements, people started using them as a daily routine. They cater to a variety of genres – brands, celebrities, millennials, and kids.

TWITTER

Twitter’s revenue was up to $1.19 billion in Q2 of 2021. It also has 206 million daily active users. It was a strong quarter for the microblogging site. The platform has added several paid subscription services to boost its revenue. These include Twitter Blue, newsletter sign-up, Super Follow, ticketed Spaces, and Tomorrow weather subscription. Today, many brands and businesses feel more positive about Twitter marketing. As the platform houses current global events conversations and ramps up in enhancing its marketing tools, Twitter is becoming the biggest threat to Facebook.

YOUTUBE

The video-sharing platform accelerated back to high growth as it reached $7 billion in revenue in Q2 of 2021. YouTube now stands at 2 billion monthly active users. Alphabet, Google’s parent company who owned YouTube reported that there was a spike in advertising revenue resulting from the lockdowns and social distancing measures from the COVID pandemic. Shopping behaviors were forced to shift from physical stores to eCommerce websites. Plus, videos have greatly influenced shoppers to learn more about a brand, product, or service.