Aro's 232 - July 2020

232 Quarterly Update - July

Kia Ora, 👋

Welcome to 232 - Aro’s quarterly update that covers all things digital marketing in NZ. Here we'll cover 2 Trends, 3 Tools, and 2 Inspirational campaigns.

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If you want 232 news hot from the oven make sure you sign up to get updates as soon as they come out! We’re only getting in touch once a quarter - as we’re kinda busy - and you probably don’t need to hear from us every week 😅.

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Firstly, congrats New Zealand on making it to level 1! Amazing to see us being leaders of the world in our pandemic response.

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Photo Competition‍

We’ve been busy trying to find Wellington’s best sunrise & sunset. We’ve had heaps of awesome submissions during our first round, and now for round 2 of the competition, it's over to you...

Vote for your favourites to go in the draw to win one of our awesome #lovelocal prizes.

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Ad Credits

Many who have been consistently using Google Ads may now see a credit in their account. This is for additional advertising, and the amount you’ll be given is proportional to how much you’ve been spending pre-covid.

We’re still waiting to hear from Facebook about the free credits they’ve promised. Looks like this is mostly US focused for the moment.

Trends

1. #LoveLocal

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By now, you’ll probably have witnessed the #LoveLocal movement taking off. It’s all about supporting local businesses after the many weeks of lockdown, during which many businesses were unable to operate.

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It’s moving people towards NZ Made products in supermarket shelves, retail decisions, and takeaway choices. One study conducted by Rutherford Labs, claims that being NZ made and owned is at the forefront of consumer decision making. Of those surveyed, 53% claimed that they were making changes to how they shop coming out of lockdown, with 70% expecting those changes to be enduring. 

Take a look at these places if you’re interested in exploring some awesome #lovelocal products:

• Buy NZ Made Facebook group
• Shop Kiwi

As a business, this means it’s more important than ever to communicate your values and mission. If you’re struggling to set these, have a look at the UN Developmental Goals. They’re a great starting point for understanding the biggest goals humanity faces.

We’ve seen locally focused values like community and people be well received across our clients. With international efforts being less effective with Kiwis. Now could be a good time to review your website’s most visited pages and how prominently your values & mission shine through.

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2. The Browser Wars: Rise of Privacy

There has been a radical shift towards digital privacy and tracking online. Since 2018 we have witnessed changing attitudes towards how data can be captured and used.

Safari released Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) back in 2017, with Firefox following suit shortly after. Such privacy features limit cookie-based advertising and analytics applications. On 7 May 2019, Google announced a plan for Chrome to follow down a similar path. Over the last few months Microsoft has launched a new Edge browser which follows in the same footsteps as Chrome and Safari, who more recently introduced yet another update around the privacy controls given to users.

The crackdown on tracking has impacted many platforms such as Google Analytics. The data you’re seeing within these platforms will not be as accurate prior to the web browser updates, and likely to limit personalisation of your advertising and remarketing.

Contrary to what you’d expect, this actually makes the walled gardens (Google, Facebook & Amazon) even more dominant, as they hold the largest logged in user bases in the world and are less reliant on third party tracking.

Safari’s ITP will impact $113 billion worth of transactional data worldwide in 2020, making it harder for businesses to attribute conversions back to campaigns and channels.

Safari’s ITP will also result in a projected 30-40% loss in user data in 2020.‍

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There are a bunch of workarounds that folks have come up with. However, the below is more foolproof:

• First Party Data is the best approach to improve the accuracy of your analytics. 
• Using a ‘logged in identity’ (tracking logged in users) is the new gold standard. 
• Setting up your own customer data infrastructure (through the likes of Segment) is the best next step to ‘futureproof’ your analytics

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Tools

1. Ubersuggest Chrome Add-on

Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest SEO tool has now added a Chrome extension, similar to Keywords Everywhere. This gives insights into the amount of searches each keyword receives & gives an indication of the number of links each page is receiving.

Pretty handy tool if you’re trying to discover the most popular searches people may enter into Google!‍

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2. Ad Library

If you’ve ever wanted to know what ads another FB page is running, the Facebook Ad Library now exists for you to explore them. We use this for competitor research and insights for a lot of our strategy sessions - and it seems to be a relatively underutilized tool.

It was mostly built for political transparency - for an example of this check out what TeamTrump’s advertising at the moment: 

3. Polls Everywhere

We’ve recently discovered PollEV - an awesome tool for virtual engagement in online workshops and webinars.

All participants need to do is go to a specific link, and they’ll see the most recent question, and have the ability to answer in a multitude of ways.

What’s great about it is that it connects into Google Slides - and displays results from within your presentation, so you don’t even need to switch screens to get viewer input.

As we moved into more virtual workshops, this was an excellent tool to give our workshops an interactive flair.

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Inspiration

1. White Man Behind A Desk Video Series

Robbie Niccol has done an amazing job with his most recent web series - The Citizens Handbook.

A great watch you’re wanting an example of how to:

• Utilise skits for educational and comedic effect
• Integrate illustrative design for punchier messaging
• Move between video formats in simple ways
• Take a potentially dry subject and make it super interesting

Robbie’s pretty much New Zealand’s John Oliver, and well worth a watch if you have a minute.

2.Hawkes Bay Bay-cation Tourism

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If you’re in Wellington you’ll probably have noticed Hawkes Bay domestic tourism campaign. The Hawkes Bay tourism board strategically focused on Wellington, and has been putting up billboards, bus ads, and buying digital display ads.

Aro Updates

1. New Team Members!

We’re pleased to welcome Michelle Messner and Miles Gaffney to the Aro fam! Michelle joins the team as a client success manager - helping provide a top-notch service to our clients. Miles is responsible for all things design - working with the Aro team to develop images and illustrations for the web.

2. Intern Program is Live!

We’ve also got 2 interns in for a month of learning a skills development. Pleased to welcome Frankie and Sophia to the Aro team as Performance Interns. These are paid roles focused on learning the tools and strategies behind search and analytics.

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That’s it from us! Anyway - that's it for the second installment of 232! Want more? Sign up for more updates delivered to your inbox 4 times a year.

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Thanks for reading,
Tim, Jonty & The Aro Digital Team 🤙

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