📦 - Filling Content Holes

DTC 529 - TikTok SEO, Overspending on Meta Retargeting Ads, and Staying Disciplined   Thursday, April 4, 2024 CRISIS AVERTED. Dear Meta, please return to business as usual so we can all remove ourselves from the edges of our seats. 😅 Good morning, A gentle reminder that Shopify is raising their prices soon. Merchants on the Shopify Plus plan will need to pay 25% more to keep their stores running. To avoid the price hike, brands will need to lock in a three-year contract and renew by April 24th. Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC: - TikTok’s newest Creator Search Insights update makes it easier for brands to dominate video SEO. - Are you overspending on retargeting ads in Meta? - And… playing the long game in business. You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Kidable Therapy, Postscript, and Bump Boxes. 👋   [Advertisement] CX 🥤 Thirsty For Better Customer Support? Do you: Want to build your reputation? Are you: Struggling to keep up with support volume? Is your goal: To provide exceptional customer service worthy of word-of-mouth marketing? [Sip from your brand new Stanley and learn how Help Scout can help](… Their simple-yet-powerful platform has everything you need to [manage 1.5x more conversations and achieve higher customer satisfaction](. Spikeball, YETI, Threadless, and thousands of other businesses rely on [Help Scout]( to delight their customers. In the free 30-minute demo, discover team-empowering features. Including: - Managing conversations across all channels in one place. - Handling a higher queue volume using AI, automation, and help centers. - Accessing data from Shopify and other apps at your fingertips. Learn how to turn one-time shoppers into lifelong customers. [Free Demo – Book Now]( *Eligible demo participants will receive a free Stanley Tumbler! [Click here to learn more](. *Sponsored   PLATFORM UPDATE 🔍 How To Use TikTok’s Creator Search Insights Tool TikTok just launched a new feature that makes it easier for brands to create SEO-friendly video content. If you’re struggling with content ideas or you’re stuck in 200 views jail, this is a great tool to leverage for your TikTok SEO content strategy. Here’s how brands can find the new feature on the app: Type ‘Creator Search Insights’ into the TikTok Search bar and press the view button. In this section, you can see popular trends along with their search popularity. 📈 [TikTok’s Creator Search Insights results when filtered by category] Filter By Category You can see top keywords in your specific niche whether you are interested in food, fashion, or sports, etc. In this screenshot, you can see some popular search terms in the fashion category. If you have a topic in mind, you can also scroll up to the search bar at the top to see the search popularity for that specific keyword. 💡 When creating content, this will give you an idea of how in-demand a certain topic or product is before dedicating time to create content around it. You will also be able to view the top videos for each keyword and analyze what made these videos so successful by looking at elements like title, thumbnails, hooks, etc. Save Ideas for Later To the right of each search term are two icons. Click the video camera icon and you can start filming a video right away. If you’re not ready to film yet, you can press the bookmark icon next to it and store search terms to your favorites folder. This can be easily accessed through the bookmark icon in the top right corner. Fill Content Holes By far the coolest feature though is the content gap feature. When you click on the black ‘For You’ button, it pulls up a submenu that allows you to switch from seeing all content to content gap. Here you can find in-demand topics that TikTok users are searching for but there are very few relevant videos on the platform to meet the audience’s needs. 💡 Brands who can fill these content holes in TikTok’s platform will potentially get a boost in search rankings since the monthly search volume is high while the competition is still low. The takeaway? Valuable research tool: This is a great SEO research tool for brands on TikTok who want to widen their audience reach and/or use it for content ideation. Speeds up brand discovery process: By focusing on content gaps, it’s easier to show up as a top video for that term since there is less competition. As TikTok continues to invest more into search tools, brands will need to refine their TikTok SEO content strategy to keep up with competitors.   META ADS 🎯 Take Control Of Your Retargeting Efforts Are you spending too much on your Meta ad retargeting campaigns? Because retargeting campaigns are reaching a smaller audience who already have some kind of awareness or affinity with your brand, it's easy for Meta's algorithm to want to oversaturate those audiences with ads to try to get them over the line. The question then becomes...how many impressions is too many impressions? 🤷 To figure out how many touchpoints or impressions your product generally takes to drive a purchase, the [Pilothouse Meta team]( suggests taking a peek at your Google Analytics account. 👇 Here’s what you can do: - Log onto your GA4 account - On the left sidebar click the Advertising tab - Select ‘Conversion Paths’ in the left sub sidebar Here you will see a table that shows you the “Touchpoints to Conversion.” This number helps you understand how many times someone interacts with your brand on different marketing channels (whether it’s through organic, Meta, or Google, etc.) before they end up converting into a customer. How does this help with Meta ad spend? If you see that your account frequency on Meta is higher than the Touchpoints to Conversion in GA4, you can use this data to help inform what your next steps should be when it comes to spend allocation and testing for efficiency in your account. For example: You might consider pulling back spend for retargeting ad campaigns that show the highest frequencies and reallocating that ad spend into Top of Funnel awareness campaigns. 💰 Try out this simple hack so you can optimize your Meta ad spend! And as always, you can talk to the [Pilothouse Meta team]( for more tips and tactics. Note: Meta accuracy is dependent on the quality of signal going to GA4. Some brands have a very high amount of direct / none source or channel attributed traffic, meaning unknown data.   🌐 IN THE SOCIAL SPHERE While it can be discouraging to not see immediate results, investing in long term strategies can yield major rewards. Can't view the image? [Click here](   📰 NEWS - Generative AI search engine Perplexity [plans to monetize by selling ads](. - Walmart Connect [grows its ad business with an omnichannel approach and more precise targeting features](. - Loewe [pokes fun at the misspelling of their brand name in the new ad campaign ‘Decades of Confusion’]( featuring Dan Levy and Audrey Plaza. - Glasses brand Warby Parker [hands out eclipse glasses]( ahead of the total eclipse on April 8th.   SPONSOR DTC 📥 Got a B2B Biz? Join dozens of B2B companies finding demand-gen success through our niche community of 160k brand leaders and founders this year. [Talk to our team to learn more](.   Have you heard our latest podcasts? - 🔍 Neil Patel on [AI’s Impact on Marketing and Future Trends]( - 🎵 [AKNF 391](: Strategies for Brands and Creators to Maximize TikTok Engagement - 🧔🏻 Anthony Mink on [Live Bearded’s EOS and Disrupting Legacy Capitalism]( - 🔑 [AKNF 389:]( Unlocking SEO Success in 2024 - 💰 Rick Cadotte on [Four Sigmatic’s TOFU strategy after Meta challenges]( - 🍪 [AKNF 387](: How to extend the life of your cookies Don’t forget to [rate the DTC Podcast]( on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) DTC Newsletter is written by [Rebecca Knight]( and [Frances Du](. Edited by [Eric Dyck](. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up [here](. Please note that items in this newsletter marked with * contain sponsored content. [Direct To Consumer]( Pilothouse, 1011 Government St., Victoria, BC V8W 1X6, Canada [Advertise with DTC]( | [Work With Pilothouse]( [Unsubscribe](