santa-claus

Winter holiday sales season is in full swing. Christmas carols began playing on November 1st before the Halloween candy went on sale. But this is also the two month period where many retailers and every nonprofit make their revenue numbers for the year.

Facebook and LinkedIn are contributing by creating new advertising opportunities. Both will now allow companies to send you advertising in their messaging systems. If you’ve written a company on Facebook’s messenger service–maybe for customer service–the company may now advertise to you on Facebook Messenger. LinkedIn is taking things a step further, allowing anyone with an advertising account to send you a message on the site.

These new programs come amidst news that Facebook may be chasing down LinkedIn’s job advertising business. The social media network is now showing a “Jobs” tab on some business pages. We know that job advertising works on Facebook even if that sounds counterintiuitive. We’ve advertised for employees for one of our nonprofit clients on Facebook for  years. Consider getting ahead of the curve like they did 

We also have news this week of missteps by digital companies acting aggressively in the market. That includes Facebook allowing advertisers to  target consumers based on a “deduced” ethnic demographic and Yahoo apparently not making public the news of its massive email breach.

The Christmas season has 35 shopping days left and nonprofits have only a week longer to get 2016 dollars in for tax credits for their donors. If your organization isn’t going full throttle right now, don’t delay any longer. Get your plan in market today. If you don’t have a plan or need help creating one, there are ways to quickly launch campaigns. Contact us to find out how.

Your Digital Marketing Spotlight for November 14, 2016

Here’s Yahoo saying it was hacked much earlier than previously reported — and it is being sued 23 times so far for the breach.
Here’s Yahoo saying it was hacked much earlier than previously reported — and it is being sued 23 times so far for the breach.

Its regulatory filing dropped on Election Day, the better to keep it hidden. Yahoo! has made a lot of mistakes in recent years, and this may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

92 Percent of Amazon Shoppers Would Not Consider Purchasing a Product That Received Less Than Three Stars
92 Percent of Amazon Shoppers Would Not Consider Purchasing a Product That Received Less Than Three Stars

Feedvisor’s Amazon User Study 2016 reveals insights into shopper research and purchase behavior, and provides recommendations for eCommerce sellers.

Facebook To Ban 'Ethnic Affinity' Targeting For Housing, Employment, Credit-Related Ads
Facebook To Ban ‘Ethnic Affinity’ Targeting For Housing, Employment, Credit-Related Ads

After weeks of push back from U.S. lawmakers, media and civil rights leaders, Facebook on Friday announced it will stop allowing advertisers to use ‘ethnic affinity’ to target the reach of employment, housing and credit-related ads.

Facebook Will Let Brands Send You Ads If You've Messaged Them Before
Facebook Will Let Brands Send You Ads If You’ve Messaged Them Before

Earlier this year, Facebook announced it was building bots that would let companies chat with you in Messenger. Now, the company has announced sponsored messages. They’re like ads, but for your chat app.

LinkedIn Opens Up Sponsored InMail to All Marketers
LinkedIn Opens Up Sponsored InMail to All Marketers

Businesses and brands can now use Sponsored InMail messages via LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager to engage their target audience.

Facebook Testing Jobs Tab on Pages
Facebook Testing Jobs Tab on Pages

Does Facebook have LinkedIn in its crosshairs?

Digital Life

The Hidden Meanings Inside 27 Famous Logos
The Hidden Meanings Inside 27 Famous Logos

Did you know that the three ellipses in Toyota’s logo include every letter of the company’s name? There’s more to many logos than a pretty picture.

 

We wrote about frictionless organizations several weeks ago. Frictionless firms are the ones that remove unnecessary hassle and complication from their interactions with clients and other businesses.

Yahoo thrust itself into the opposite category this week when it stopped allowing people to forward their Yahoo email address to another address. Accounts already set up for forwarding kept that capability, but no new Yahoo email forwarding accounts can be created.

This seems like an overreaction to the disclosure of a major hacking attack on Yahoo and the subsequent doubt over the company’s acquisition by Verizon. Rather than let prized email subscribers flee to the competition, Yahoo is locking them in.

That’s the worst possible reaction to crisis. Customers of any type–even those on free plans–should be nurtured without restriction. They stay if you care for them well. They leave if you don’t.  They leave for other reasons too, but locking an unwilling party into any deal can create a horrible relationship between business and client and bad word-of-mouth for the sake of a relatively small amount of incremental revenue.

We don’t have contract lengths. Every single client–even retainer clients–have a 30 day opt out clause. The 30 days is only to give both companies time to disentangle and transition work.

Take a look at your policies regarding customers especially during adverse times. Are you easy to do business with and as frictionless as possible? And how easy is it to stop working together once a client creates an emotional break with your organization?

Your Marketing Spotlight for October 31

Your Thought-Provoking Moment

Header photo by Chaz McGregor.  Other images are thumbnails from content on newsworthy websites and serve as links under the provisions of fair use.

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shining flashlight into night sky

Articles about AT&T’s massive Time-Warner acquisition and the U.S. Presidential election crowded out other news this week.

These big stories drowned out marketing news, especially from social media, that might be prominent in other weeks. Organizations can miss important developments that can improve their success when this happens.

And it was a busy week for the Facebook-Instagram organization as Facebook commerce went global. There was also news about Google privacy changes from nonprofit ProPublica.

Our mission is to always stay in touch with the organizations that affect our daily lives. Global news can drown out their voices. Those are the weeks we have to know about things that happened that can affect our work and your company.

Your Marketing Spotlight for October 24

ICYMI: The Most Clicked Marketing Stories from Recent Posts

Facebook Messenger adds buy button

Common Ways Scammers Try To Hack Your Data

Nearly 85% of Smartphone App Time in These 5 Apps

Header photo by Dino Reichmuth. Other images are thumbnails from content on newsworthy websites and serve as links under the provisions of fair use.

Want a free copy of SPOTLIGHT emailed to you every Monday morning?
Go here: 
https://silverbeacon.ongoodbits.com/