🚨Key Google Updates, Fresh Instagram Features, and TikTok’s Holiday Marketing Guide!

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of The Digital Dispatch!

I hope you had a great weekend!

On Sunday, 16 Add People colleagues took part in Altrincham's 10k race to raise funds for The Counselling & Family Centre. 🏃♂️🏃♀️

This charity supports individuals facing mental health challenges and works to combat the harmful stigma surrounding mental distress.

They’re so close to reaching their target. If you’d like to read about why our colleagues got involved and perhaps make a donation, you can do so here.

Thank you!

📰 On to the News 👇

5 stories for you this week with some key updates from Google and Instagram:

1. Google Merchant Centre Upgrades: Google introduces new trend insights and AI-powered performance summaries to enhance shopping listings.
2. Google Ads New Categories Tab: Google Ads now includes category-level performance insights and demand trends.
3. GA4 Benchmarking Data: Google Analytics 4 adds benchmarking data to compare your performance with industry peers.
4. TikTok’s 2024 Holiday Marketing Guide: TikTok releases a guide with tips for holiday marketing, including starting early and using TikTok Shop.
5. Instagram’s New Creative Features: Instagram unveils new fonts, text animations, and the ability to comment on Stories.

New Tools to Help Merchants Tap into Shopping Trends 🛍️

With Christmas just 120 days away, Google is gearing up for the holiday season by rolling out new updates for businesses using Google Merchant Centre to enhance their Google Shopping listings.

Key Updates:

Product Trend Insights: Google is adding new trend insights that show popular shopping searches and purchases. Google say this is to help merchants ‘jump on viral moments’ by allowing them to see what shoppers are searching for. 

Google give an example here:

“Say you’re a speciality denim retailer thinking of putting away some surplus inventory of knee-length denim shorts that haven’t been taking off. The new trends insights in Merchant Center might show you that not only are “denim Bermuda shorts” surprisingly popular right now but also people are actually using the words “long denim jorts” to find them.”

These trend insights should help businesses plan inventory and update product descriptions to match search terms.

AI-Powered Product Performance Summaries: Google is also introducing AI-generated summaries that highlight which of your products are performing best at any given time. It also shows ‘key trends’ which can help you focus your marketing efforts.

Conversational Queries for Reporting: You can now use simple queries, like “show me the performance of my best-selling dresses,” to generate custom reports.

This feature uses AI to create tailored data sets without the need for manual report building.

Improved Product Availability Sync: A new automated onboarding process will sync in-store availability from your website to your Merchant Center account, making it easier to keep your listings up to date.

New Customer Acquisition Goals: Google is also enhancing Performance Max and Search campaigns with new customer acquisition goals to help refine your targeting.

Takeaway for Businesses?

With Google still the go-to platform for product discovery, make sure to leverage these tools to maximise your marketing results.

Google Ads Adds Product Categories Tab for Better Insights📈

Google Ads has introduced a new Categories tab under the Products section

This update offers Ecommerce insights with category-level performance metrics, demand trends, and actionable recommendations to help you optimise your campaigns.

Key Features:

• Performance Insights: Identify what’s driving success and where to improve.
• Demand Trends: Spot shifts in consumer interest by category.
• Actionable Recommendations: Get tailored tips to boost your return on ad spend (ROAS), like pausing low-performing categories and optimising high-performing ones.

Some advertisers are questioning if Google will categorise products accurately.

Takeaway:

This new feature could help refine your ad strategies and give you an edge over the competition, all within the product page.

Google Analytics 4 Introduces Benchmarking Data 📊

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) now lets advertisers see how they stack up against competitors by allowing them to compare their performance across key metrics with other businesses in their industry. 

This update could be really useful for helping to inform advertiser’s strategic decisions and goal setting. 

How It Works:

• Access benchmarking data via Admin > Account Settings if “Modeling contributions & business insights” is enabled.
• Benchmarks are updated every 24 hours, showing your trendline, the median, and the range within your peer group.

Key Features:

• Customisable Peer Groups: Choose categories to find relevant comparisons.
• Data Privacy: Google ensures all data is encrypted and aggregated.
• Wide Range of Metrics: Includes acquisition, engagement, retention, and monetisation.

The Big Picture: This update fulfils a long-standing demand for comparative data, allowing businesses to better gauge their performance within their industry.

Next Steps: Check your GA4 account for this new feature and start using it to enhance your insights.

TikTok Releases a 2024 Holiday Marketing Guide 🎄🎃

If you plan to use TikTok for Q4, then the platform's new 2024 guide to holiday marketing might just be your ultimate read! 📚

Focused on the European market, it features tips, usage insights, and data pointers to help you plan your strategy.

To save you time, we’ve selected 5 top tips. 🌟:

1. Start Early: Users begin their holiday planning and shopping well in advance. Brands should kick off their holiday campaigns ahead of peak shopping times to capture early interest and engagement.
2. Hashtags: Use and create compelling hashtags to increase visibility and interaction. Hashtags are a powerful tool for driving holiday engagement and discovery. 
3. Engage with Creators: Collaborate with TikTok creators to boost brand visibility and engagement. Creators can help drive authenticity and resonance, leading to increased follower rates and interactions with your ads.
4. Tap into Self-Gifting Trends: Many users buy gifts for themselves during the holidays. Position your products as perfect for self-gifting and promote them with relevant hashtags and content.
5. Use TikTok Shop: Set up and optimise your TikTok Shop to streamline product discovery and checkout directly on the platform. Integrate Shop Ads to boost visibility and sales.

If you want the full 18-page guide, you can download it HERE

Instagram Updates You Should Know About! 📱🔔

Instagram is rolling out exciting new creative options, including a variety of new fonts for your Reels and Stories, fresh stickers for photos, text animations, and much more!

New Fonts and Text Animation

Instagram now offers a variety of new fonts and text animation features. Simply open the text tool, choose a font, and you can animate or apply effects to your text for a personalised touch.

Stickers and Enhanced Creative Options

Users can now add stickers to photos and carousel posts, enhancing creative flexibility.

Adapting to Trends

These updates aim to attract younger audiences and accommodate those potentially moving from TikTok.

Instagram is also focusing on music features to align with current trends - like adding music to profiles.

Overall, these updates provide more creative tools to enrich your content and your follower's experience.

Instagram Adds Comments to Stories to Boost Engagement🤳

Instagram is introducing a new feature allowing users to comment on Stories, with comments visible to all viewers.

These appear at the bottom of the screen, just above the function controls and viewer details, offering a non-intrusive way to enhance interaction.

Key Changes

Commenting on Stories: Users can now add comments to Stories, which will be visible to anyone who views the Story. This new feature aims to stimulate more discussion around Story content.

Encouraging Engagement: With more users shifting conversations to private DMs, Instagram is looking for ways to boost engagement on its platform. The introduction of comments on Stories follows the success of other features like Notes, which have increased interaction, particularly among teens.

Options for Creators: Creators can choose to disable comments on their Stories if they prefer. However, enabling comments could help increase visibility and interaction with their content.

Benefits for Businesses?

This feature could help businesses boost story content engagement with followers.

Allowing comments fosters a more interactive experience, helping businesses build community and respond to customer questions in real time.

That's All Folks!

That wraps up this week's edition of The Digital Dispatch! We hope you found these updates insightful and helpful for your business.

Stay tuned for more tips, trends, and tools to keep you ahead in the digital landscape.

Until next time!

Who are we? 🙋

We’re Add People – a group of down-to-earth digital marketing experts specialising in budget-friendly campaigns that help small-to-medium-sized businesses grow.

From Plumbers to Dance Schools, we’ve helped all kinds of SMEs tap into digital marketing.

If you would like help with your digital marketing, then contact us here.

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