Industry News: LinkedIn Leads Updates With New Boosting and Event Ad Options

You know what time it is - time for another industry news blog! This time we've got a lot of new updates to cover. In the fast-paced world of localized marketing, it's critical to keep track of all of the latest industry trends and platform updates. Rather than search for all of the information yourself, this blog provides you with the most relevant industry news and tips for incorporating these updates into your localized marketing efforts. As a multi-location marketer, it can be tricky to stay ahead of the latest trends, but it's an essential piece of what it takes to dominate your industry.

LinkedIn Reveals Events Ads and "Boosted" Posts

LinkedIn recently introduced Event Ads. These Events Ads are a new ad option for LinkedIn users and can be set up through LinkedIn's Campaign Manager. The Event Ad will appear in the user's LinkedIn feed and include essential information about the event, including date, time, location, registration information, and an image promoting the event. Users will also see if any of their connections have registered for the event as well. This new ad option is an excellent opportunity for multi-location marketers who host local events at their businesses. The goal of this ad format is to drive event registrations and bring more attention to local events. LinkedIn has also released an Events Analytics tool that will enable advertisers to track attendee and registration traffic. The analytics tool will also highlight unique event visits, attendees' top job categories, and total attendees. As a multi-location marketer, it's essential to track the performance of your ad campaigns, and this tool can help.

In conjunction with the Event Ads, LinkedIn rolled out another feature that allows users to boost posts directly from your business's LinkedIn page. This new "Boost" feature makes it easier for companies to boost posts in LinkedIn and automatically creates a campaign in your ad account associated with the boosted post. Once you select to boost your post from your profile page, you will choose the objective for your boosted post and select your target audience. You'll also be prompted to put in the boosted post's daily budget and choose the location you want to target. This opportunity to boost posts more seamlessly is great for multi-location marketers. Boosted content is a great way to get more eyes on your content without setting up an ad campaign and can often be less expensive. To choose which content you want to boost, you can look at what is already performing well organically and choose that content for boosting. As mentioned, for ad campaigns, it's crucial to track the performance of your boosted posts. Once you understand what your audience engages with best, you can continue to replicate or further improve similar content.

Google's Growing Focus on E-Commerce

Google recently held its annual I/O conference. At the event, Google's president of commerce and payments shared insight into Google's new Shopping Graph along with information about Google's expanded integration with Shopify. Google's Shopping Graph is a comprehensive dataset for billions of products and the businesses that sell them. The Shopping Graph is similar to Google's Knowledge Graph and brings together information from websites, prices, reviews, and videos. The AI-enhanced model then takes all of this information and uses it to impact what appears in search results. Google's partnership with Shopify will allow businesses to feature their products across Google Maps, Google Search, Google Images, and Youtube. This is an excellent opportunity for multi-location marketers. The integration's goal is to help businesses become more visible through Google Shopping and ultimately increase sales for local stores and locations. Through Google Lens, consumers can take it a step further, and now, when they view an image in Google Photos, there will be a search lens that they can move over the image and a list of similar products to what's featured in the image will appear. As a multi-location marketer, it's essential to be aware of these updates. If you want your multi-location business to be featured in the Shopping Graph, you must submit your company's product data to Google Merchant, or the Manufacturing Center feeds. These features will make your business's products more visible to your target audience if optimized correctly.

Facebook Introduces Live Shopping Fridays

Facebook revealed a new Live Shopping Fridays campaign that they will be doing through July 13th. This campaign is a series of live shopping events that will take place every Friday. Each event will host big-name brands for interactive shopping live streams. During the event, users will join the stream through the brand's page or Facebook's "Shop" tab. Once at the event, users can shop from the brand and check out directly from Facebook Shops. The purpose of these events is to promote Facebook Shops. If your multi-location business isn't already using Facebook Shops, it is something to consider. Facebook Shops allows your business to sell products directly through Facebook, expanding the opportunities for consumers to purchase your products. To take it a step further, your multi-location business can test Facebook Live Shopping. With Live Shopping, your consumers get the chance to interact with your multi-location business, ask questions about products or services, and even make purchases. It provides a unique opportunity for your business to connect with local consumers and boost online visibility and sales.

Instagram Stories Adds Option for Text Captions

We'll keep this one short and sweet! Instagram recently announced an exciting new update that will allow users to add captions to their stories and reels. This new feature turns verbal speech into captions and is a valuable option for multi-location marketers. It is a great option to include so people who are hard of hearing or people who prefer to watch stories without the volume can still enjoy them. As a multi-location marketer, you should test including captions on your stories and reels moving forward, and you don't have to worry about any extra work! Instagram will create captions for you.

That wraps up our latest industry news update! Now that you have all of the newest information, it's time to decide what your multi-location business should incorporate into its localized marketing strategy. From LinkedIn Event Ads to Facebook's Live Shopping, there's a lot to take in. For more support on managing your localized marketing efforts across all of your business locations, request a demo with SOCi! SOCi is the central command™ for multi-location marketers and the all-in-one platform for your localized marketing needs. From local search to local social and beyond, we have you covered. What're you waiting for? It's time to take your localized marketing strategy to new heights today!