Monday 8th June 2015

On Monday 8 June, Paul Morris, founder of Superb Digital, published an article on the introduction of ‘App-Linking’ to Bing and Google. His article explores new features that the search giants are talking about implementing – features which will see apps show up in search results.

This, of course, will add a new item onto every SEO expert’s to-do list and will add a new dimension to the future of app marketing, even across the range of smaller developers.

Morris talks about how the new features will ‘mark a move towards apps becoming a dominant force in how people experience the web’. He also addresses the fact that SEO will have a major place in app marketing and advises search marketers to keep an eye on this trend as it develops.

 

Tuesday 9th June 2015

On Tuesday the 9th of June Behshad Behzadi, Director of Conversational Search at Google, officially announced the search engine’s new ‘location-based’ search feature.

This feature enables Googlers to ask questions like ‘What does this store sell?’ or ‘when does this restaurant open?’ and Google will use their location to answer, without them having to mention a name.

Behzadi – speaking at the 2015 Search Marketing Expo (SMX) in Paris – showed how it worked with videos of people in different locations asking things like ‘what is the name of this church?’ or ‘how deep is this lake?’ and Google answering them correctly. Behzadi himself displayed its capabilities by saying ‘call this conference center’ and Google, identifying his location in Paris and the conference center he was in, dutifully places the call.

The feature, which is yet to be officially named, is available on Android and the Google app on iOS. Danny Sullivan, founding editor at Search Engine Land, shares the promotional videos, discusses its features and shows us how to use it.

 

Wednesday 10th June

 On Wednesday the 20th of June Facebook announced that it was introducing a ‘Buy’ button that will enable people to buy items found in their news feed – without having to do so much as open a new tab.

The social network stressed the fact that making purchases through Facebook is safe and secure. “Whether you want to save payment information with Facebook for future purchases is entirely up to you.” They said. However, they also added that saving your payment information will make purchasing easier, especially on mobile.

Search Engine Land’s Matt Southern discusses this new introduction and how the roll-out is going to work. He also talks about how this news continues the trend of companies adding proprietary call-to-action purchase buttons to their respective platforms.

Twitter started the trend this past September, Pinterest announced in February that it will soon be rolling out a Buy button, and news broke last month that Google will soon be adding a similar button of its own.

 

Thursday 11 June

Digital marketing specialist, Purna Virji gives us an excellent summary of one of the best PPC sessions to happen at this year’s SMX.

This informative round-up starts by recapping what Marty Weintraub (founder of aimClear) had to say about headline creative hacks and constructs.

It then reviews (Rankhammer president) Steve Hammer’s talk on PPC ad copy and his thoughts on Adwords edition customizers and scripts.

Brad Geddes’ (founder of Certified Knowledge) speech entitled ‘How to get creative with ad copy and testing’ is then summarized and the article ends with the highlights of the Q&A session with these three heavyweight contributors.

 

Friday 12 June

Lin Huang, senior data scientist at Microsoft, presented an experiment the software giant has been running which involves the analysis of social media to provide actionable marketing and brand insights.

Huang, a mathematical psychologist who heads up Bing Ads Advertiser Experimentation & Program Measurement Initiatives at Microsoft, shared the figures collected from this experiment and spoke about how marketers can use the data from their social media analytics to improve their strategies.

Columnist Mark Traphagen recaps Huang’s talk and summarizes the various processes for collecting, segmenting, analyzing and utilizing data and the method of analysis Huang has developed to help brands better target ad spend and ad content according to their core strengths as seen by their customers and fans.