Distract

The team are out at the YMS event hosted by Pion in London for the next 2 days, as we support our Clients in how to target Millennial and GenZ audiences. We've also partnered with our sister agency Distract on a specialist TikTok Partnership service with Spark Ads to take advantage of the next generation of social commerce. Head over to our stand to learn more!

📣 Exciting news! We're exhibiting at The Midlands Business Network Ltd Expo in just two days. I am looking forward to having some interesting chats about marketing and connecting with local businesses. See you on Thursday.👋

📣 PSA Marketers: There's no excuse not to learn new platforms! 📣 Last week I successfully passed my first Meta Blueprint exam. Despite not working on Facebook ads daily or using the platform much personally, surprisingly, I cleared the practice papers on my first attempt. After that, I dedicated a week to revising an area I knew I had a foundation in. Securing the Media Buying certification proved the value of transferable skills in marketing. With my experience in Google Advertising and knowledge of general marketing strategy, it was easy to find the parallels between platforms. This experience confirmed my belief that as marketers, we have a wealth of adaptable skills. While there are nuances to each platform, the core principles of marketing strategy remain the same. The takeaway? There's no excuse for marketers to shy away from learning new platforms. As the landscape evolves, embracing these changes becomes essential. The traditional marketing funnel of awareness, consideration, and conversion serves as a timeless guide. Embracing new platforms can open up a host of new opportunities, and with knowledge of one platform, you’re never starting from zero.  It's about leveraging our existing knowledge and experimenting with how these platforms can enhance our marketing efforts. 📈

We are delighted to announce that we will exhibit at The Midlands Business Network Expo on Thursday, May 2nd, 2024. Come and meet our team, we’d love to have a chat! Book your free ticket here: https://lnkd.in/eg7_4HRt

Did you know you can edit videos in Google Ads? In asset library, you can edit videos or even create a new one from existing assets. Whilst this shouldn’t be a replacement for creating high-quality video creatives, having the ability to trim an existing video or add a voiceover can allow you to add quality assets to your campaigns efficiently. Moving forward asset quality and variety will be more heavily weighted when determining ad strength for Performance Max campaigns and there’s no excuse for not having engaging video content. 

Canva - the killer of graphic design? 🎨 As a marketer in an agency with a graphic design team, I can see both the benefits and the downfalls of Canva in marketing assets. In their Ads & Commerce Blog, Google recently announced that there will be a Canva integration allowing users to publish their Canva designs straight to Performance Max ads. Google say “We’re growing our partnerships, starting with Canva. If you start your design or creative process in Canva, an upcoming Canva integration app will make it easier to publish images directly into your Performance Max campaign.” Do you think this integration could lead to lower-quality ads?  ⬇

Want to run ads on Google or Meta? Here are a few things to consider when choosing the right landing page for your campaigns. 📈 1. Make it seamless 🚀 Choose a landing page that is relevant and allows for a seamless customer journey. Users are surprisingly lazier than we think (guilty myself), they don’t want to scroll to find the product they initially clicked on after landing on your homepage. 2. Make it fast 💥 Check your website loading speed - it affects the user experience more than you may think. Studies have shown that around 40% of users will abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. 3. Make it obvious 👀 Try to make sure your user knows exactly what action to take on your landing page. Keep your CTA’s clear, concise, and most importantly - easy for them to carry out. With lead gen, I love a page with an open form and a super obvious CTA button. 4. Make it mobile friendly 🤳 With studies showing that around 69% of online shoppers use their smartphones for online purchases, there is a chance your website is being visited by phone users the majority of the time. Where possible, optimise for mobile users, and try to make the user journey as easy as it is on desktop. Importantly, don’t ignore your data. If you’re noticing a lot of bounces once people come through your ads, it’s worth experimenting with another landing page. Any others? Let me know 👇👇 #landingpage #meta #paidsearch #Googleads

In 2024 do we really need to distinguish ‘Marketing’ from ‘Digital Marketing’? 👩💻 I am intrigued, and if this is the case does  ‘Analogue Marketing’ in the more traditional sense still exist as a standalone skill or service? 🗞️ I’d like to think as a ‘digital specialist’ that the word ‘digital’ wouldn’t hold me back from a good idea or campaign…if that idea were to god forbid involve an element of print⁉️ In my honest opinion, the best campaigns are truly holistic ones! Multi-media, multi-dimensional, with enough touch points to truly stick in the mind of your target audience. It is now extremely rare to find a media outlet that doesn’t have at least an in-part digital offering, and if only to serve in making the user journey more complicated, the majority of consumers have half an eye on their phone screen even when they are digesting more traditional media 📱 I can feel myself heading into a second screens research rabbit hole already 🐇 So when looking for marketing services should the focus be on one or the other? Or should we be looking for a best-of-both-worlds solution? A picture from the weekend, when I spent a few hours being truly, no screens for a change.

📣 We're excited to announce that Steve Bryant, founder and Managing Director of Umbrella Brands Group, behind affiliate marketing agency Thoughtmix, is the new owner of Distract! 🗞 Steve is an old friend of Peter Watson and Bradley McKenny and has been actively interested in Distract's journey over its nearly nine years of operation. Under Steve's leadership, we plan to redefine and consolidate our offering. Recognising the team's strengths in paid advertising, Distract will become a specialist paid media agency. To find out more about Steve and his plans for Distract, check out our latest blog: https://lnkd.in/eQgWEHcX

A busy day in Streets Chartered Accountants Banbury office filming with Nathan Bignell! Thanks to Summer Reynolds and Elysia Coates from our agency Distract for a great recording session. Steve Bryant Stephanie Henderson