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Tomorrow is International Day of 🌳 🌲 Forests and the Tree, Reader! Take some time today to appreciate the managed and wild spaces near you.

In today’s edition:

• Today's 👉 Tip of the Day is for market positioning

• 🚨 Conversion funnel optimization with GA4

• Instagram 🔥 promo codes

• YouTube’s 🤖 AI disclosure tool

• 📣 Additional industry news from Instagram and YouTube

Are you struggling to communicate what your product or service does and why it matters to your target customers? Looking for a model to create a clear and compelling message that communicates the value of your product or service to your target audience?

The And, But, Therefore Formula

Start by making a statement that your target customer agrees with. Focus on what they want or aspire to achieve. This statement should be something that resonates with your audience and sets the stage for the problem you're going to address. "You want to explore the world and feel like a local when you travel."

Next, describe the problem or obstacle that is preventing your target customer from getting what they want. This is where you highlight the challenge or pain point that your product or service solves. "But typical tourist lodgings, such as hotels and resorts, make you feel separated from the authentic culture of the place you're visiting."

Finally, explain how your product or service helps the customer overcome the obstacle and achieve their desired outcome. This is your opportunity to position your offering as the ideal solution to the problem you've identified. "Therefore, stay in real homes and belong anywhere in the world with Airbnb."

The formula works because it taps into the natural way our brains process information—we're wired to pay attention to problems and their solutions.

Today's tip is inspired by Park Howell, a featured presenter in the Social Media Marketing Society.

Like Rocket Fuel for Your Marketing… 

When you join the Social Media Marketing Society you get top experts covering all of the important marketing topics, including AI, marketing psychology, conversion rate optimization, email marketing, content marketing, and so much more. Our training library gives you a foundation to build off of—and a library of resources when you need them. Twice a month we add new training on the latest topics to help you achieve your marketing goals.  

“The ongoing education, training, and updates are invaluable,” said Shawn Scarbrough Lehman.

I’m ready for my marketing to take off.

Using Google Analytics 4 to Improve Conversions

Before diving into the technical aspects of setting up Google Analytics 4 (GA4), it's crucial to take a step back and think strategically about how your website generates revenue. What are the key actions or "conversions" that a visitor needs to take for your business to make money? The answer will vary depending on your business model:

For an eCommerce site, the main conversion is typically a product purchase. For a lead generation site, it may be filling out a contact form or signing up for a no-cost trial. For a content site, it could be ad clicks or newsletter signups.

Take some time to map out your website's money-making process from start to finish. Identify the "macro-conversions" that directly generate revenue and the "micro-conversions" that lead up to them. For example, a macro-conversion might be purchasing a product, and a micro-conversion may be viewing a product page or adding an item to the cart.

Having a clear picture of your conversion funnel will help you set up GA4 to track the metrics that matter most to your bottom line. Then, you can set up the following capabilities to see how many people take each step and where you may be losing potential customers.

Enhanced Measurement for Events

GA4 can automatically track a number of common website interactions as events, without any additional setup required on your part. These events (and more) are tracked by default when you toggle on Enhanced Measurement in your GA4 property settings:

• when a user scrolls to the bottom of a page (90% depth)

• clicks a link leading to an external site

• plays, pauses, and completes events on embedded YouTube videos

• downloads a file linked on your site

Conversion Reports

GA4 simplifies conversion tracking by making every interaction an event you can mark as a conversion with a simple toggle.

For example, if you want to track newsletter signups, you will create a custom event that fires whenever a user submits the signup form, and then go to your property settings and toggle that event on as a conversion.

That's it! The event will now show up in your Conversion reports. This flexibility makes it much easier to track the metrics that matter to your unique business.

Exploration Funnel Analysis

Want to see how users progress through your conversion funnel? GA4 offers powerful funnel reporting capabilities with its Exploration feature. You can build a funnel based on any series of events you want to analyze. For example, an eCommerce funnel might include these steps:

• Viewed a product page

• Added a product to cart

• Initiated checkout

• Purchased 

GA4 will show you what percentage of users take each step, and where you may be losing people along the way. Even better, you can layer on audience segments to reveal how different types of users move through your funnel. How do first-time visitors compare to returning visitors? Do mobile shoppers convert at a lower rate than desktop users?

With these insights, you can start to optimize your user experience and plug holes in your funnel.

Today's advice is provided with insights from Zack Duncan.

🗞 3-Minute Instagram Reels: Instagram is currently testing an expansion of its Reels video upload feature, allowing some users to upload Reels videos up to three minutes in length. This marks the first time the extended-length option has been observed in live testing on the platform. However, the longer Reels can only be uploaded using pre-recorded videos, as the Reels camera does not yet support capturing videos of this duration directly within the app. Source: Social Media Today

🗞 Promo Codes on Instagram: Instagram is launching a new feature globally that allows brands to include promotional codes directly in their advertisements on the platform. This feature aims to ensure that users get the best prices when shopping through ads on both Instagram and Facebook. The promotional codes are sourced directly from the brands. Instagram will automatically apply valid codes at checkout or display them for users to copy and paste during the purchase process. Source: Instagram

🗞 YouTube Auto-Generated Caption Edits: YouTube is experimenting with letting desktop viewers suggest corrections to auto-generated captions. The test will be limited to a small percentage of English-language channels that have auto-generated captions enabled. Viewers participating in the experiment can suggest corrections by clicking on the gear icon, selecting subtitles, and choosing the "suggest caption corrections" option. Additionally, viewers can upvote existing suggested corrections. Feedback can be provided by clicking the cancel icon. Source: YouTube

🗞 YouTube AI Disclosure Tool: YouTube launched a new tool requiring creators to disclose when their videos contain realistic content that could be easily mistaken for a real person, place, or event, especially when users create or alter content using synthetic media, including generative artificial intelligence (AI). The disclosures will be displayed as labels, either in the expanded description or on the front of the video player, making it clear to viewers that the content they are watching may not be entirely authentic. Creators will not be required to disclose the use of generative AI or other techniques when the content is clearly unrealistic, animated, or includes special effects. Source: YouTube

Did You Know?

The oldest and heaviest living organism in the world, the Pando aspen grove in Utah, is 80K years old. This cat does not care.