Latest Marketing News for Small Business
There is a lot going on in the world of marketing right now. This week, Meta launched Threads, a potential Twitter replacement, Barbie is everywhere you look thanks to 60 years of consistent branding, and Canadians have a totally different take on researching their purchases than our American neighbours. Let’s get started!
Start Threadin’ the News
Earlier this month, Meta launched its new microblog platform, Threads. Other than trying to grab market share as Musk-led Twitter devolves into a glorified troll farm, it’s not entirely clear what Threads will bring to the social media sphere, but businesses are already hopping on board.
Search Engine Land has done this great breakdown for how Threads could potentially support your marketing efforts.
Something that jumped out to me from their deep dive is that Threads isn’t offered in the EU because it doesn’t meet European privacy standards. Privacy legislation in all jurisdictions is evolving right now, so this is another reminder to make sure Threads (nor any other social platform) isn’t overrepresented in your marketing strategy,
Canadians Are Better (Researchers)
I couldn’t help but feel a little surge of pride when reading PwC’s latest Canadian Consumer Insights. It includes an overview of how Canadians research their purchases, and how we differ from our neighbours to the south.
It turns out, Canadians use online search as their main method of researching purchases, whereas Americans turn to Amazon as their top choice to compare potential purchases.
This may be in part because Amazon has a broader selection and faster shipping in the US than in Canada, but regardless, using a search engine to get multiple perspectives on your potential purchase offers a more fulsome view than relying on one retailer’s website.
Canadians’ research methods are also good news for sellers and service providers, because we have more control over how our brand comes across on a search engine results page than on another retailer’s website.
Speaking of Search…
While we’re on the topic of search engines, there are changes coming that will affect all of us. Here’s a great article on that.
Digital marketers and small businesses have spent the last decade focused on how our business appears in Google search. Lately though, it’s actually Bing search that is providing the most interesting insights. That’s because Bing is already using AI platform ChatGPT to inform its search results.
All search engines are adopt generative AI methods of giving people the information they need, which logically means people will get what they need from the search engine results page without having to visit a specific website. This is a trend we’re already seeing.
That means we can expect less web traffic to come from Google search in the future, something we should start planning for now.
Barbie Knows Branding
If you’ve spent any time checking out upcoming summer blockbuster films, you’ve undoubtedly seen the trailers for Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig’s take on Barbie.
If you have somehow missed the myriad of pink promotions, just do a quick Google search and you’ll immediately see what everyone’s favourite plastic paragon has to do with marketing. No literally. If you search for anything related to the Barbie film, the entire Google background changes to pink, with even pinker sparkles.
The film’s marketing budget is clearly many magnitudes larger than your average small business’s but it does underscore the importance of branding for any business. From the plain pink billboards with no text other than the movie’s opening date, to the real-life Barbie Dream House that has been constructed as an Air BNB, all these creative efforts only work because we can all recognize the Barbie brand with just a small amount of information, like a color or a font.
This level of brand consistency helps connect the product to the audience in a way that’s as flawless as Barbie herself.
