And just like that…..January is over, IBS is around the corner and I’m feeling pretty pretty good about this year. Anyone else jumped on the SATC reboot bandwagon? I loved it! Between that and Emily in Paris my love of clothing and fashion was reinvigorated. There is already major outfit planning for IBS happening. I’m so freaking excited to wear clothes and see people. Most of January has been spent with my family between the 4 walls of my home so I’m more than ready for some socialization! Speaking of pants with buttons, I’m wearing some today because I’m hosting the January edition of Homefiniti & Beyond! Come talk with Megan, Angela, and me about IBS at 1pm eastern over on our Facebook page!
Before I head into the”studio” let’s talk about FLoC’s, CDP’s, and housing market performance in December plus a bonus piece about the reliability of the Google Ads recommendations section.
FLoC’s
FLoC’s have flown the coop and are being replaced by something called Topics. There will be 300 topics which Google will assign to every website excluding topics pertaining to sensitive info like race and gender. Based on the last three weeks of your browsing history a site that supports topics, will provide Google ads with one of your top 5 topics for each of the past three weeks which will allow the Ad network to choose which ads you should see and when.
Also users will be able to see which topics they’ve been added to and choose to remove them if they don’t want to be associated with a certain topic. And this info can be combined with other signals such as the content of the article that a user is reading at the time an ad is shown. This should allow for personalized ad experiences that respect user privacy.
CDP
Oh how I love thee. When I first read about CDP’s I was like, yes this is what has been missing from all the data and analytics that we use to help our clients generate leads. And now every time I read about them, I just get more excited. So here’s a little article that further explains the role of a CDP within marketing and here’s one that talks about where CDP’s might be headed. That one in particular was interesting because it’s very easy to think that combining a CDP with MA and a CRM is the right move but my feeling, and one that is supported in this article, is that that clogs up the works. CRM’s are for sales and CDP’s are for marketing. Yes there’s cross pollination of information, but the two need to exist in a separate space because at the end of the day, the way I as a marketer am going to interact with that info is vastly different than the way a sales professional will. The article does indicate special use cases in which the two could be combined, but it also notes the differences in the way certain verticals function and will use and adopt CDP’s.
DECEMBER 2021 HOUSING NUMBERS
First the not so good news, interest in buying a new home is on the decline. It hit a high note in the 4th quarter of 2020, and we certainly saw that pan out in January of 2021 with the crazy pace of new home sales. But since then it’s been downhill. However, there are two things to note here:
- Interest is still respectively higher than it was from 2018 through the second quarter of 2020
- Buyers who are willing to look at new and used homes is on the rise
That shouldn’t be overlooked. There is a lot of news out there for potential buyers to consume about supply chain shortages, lumber costs, and lack of skilled laborers. That is some scary stuff. The fact remains, the used inventory is super low and those homes that are available aren’t exactly bargains.
Now onto the good stuff, new homes sales hit a high note in December! And from what we’re hearing, it’s still going well in January. So take that aforementioned data.
GOOGLE ADS
If you’ve ever taken a look at the Google Ads dashboard you may have noticed a section called recommendations. It is the bane of my existence. Google Ads have these optimization scores that are supposed to tell you how your ads are performing and they set a target number they want you to meet in order to be considered a good Google Ad administrator. They provide a whole slew of recommendations for you in order to improve this score. But every time I check them, most are either not within my allocated budget or not going to help me get qualified leads for our clients which is what we want. I don’t care how many clicks or impressions we get, if we’re not driving qualified leads, who cares. And I found that more often than not, the recommendations were going to decrease lead quality. And today, this article supports my concerns. I feel seen and validated so I thought I’d share it with you all. Home builder marketing is a unique beast, for which most best practices in digital marketing don’t apply. One size does not fit all.
Finished up just in the nick of time. Hope you’ll watch our episode today.
