In the Loupe
In the Loupe
Do These 10 Marketing Techniques Still Even Matter??? ft. Hope Bellair
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The marketing world moves FAST, which is why Michael checked-in with Digital Marketing Manager at Punchmark, Hope Bellair, to ask if these 10 Digital Marketing techniques still matter. Hope gets candid with us about everything from hashtags and following counts to AEO and Podcasts. You won't wanna miss this one!
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Welcome And What Still Works
SPEAKER_01Welcome back everybody to In the Loop. What is up everybody? My name is Michael Burpo. Thanks again for listening to In the Loop. So this week I'm having on Hope Belair. She's the digital marketing manager at Punchmark. And we have seen a lot of change in the marketing world in the last, I mean, year, but also nine years at Punchmark. And this time I'm checking in on 10 marketing, I guess, techniques or tools. And I'm asking Hope, do they still matter? And she is very honest and explains uh what matters these days in the world of marketing, everything from hashtags to AEO and even podcasting. So everybody, please enjoy.
Sponsor Punchmark
SPEAKER_00This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website, platform, and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, Punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth, or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, PunchMark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmark.com slash go. And now back to the show.
SPEAKER_01What
Marketing Shifts Toward AI Search
SPEAKER_01is up, everybody? I'm joined by uh Hope Bel Air, digital marketing manager at Punchmark. How are you doing today, Hope?
SPEAKER_02I'm doing well. How are you?
SPEAKER_01So well. Uh I'm excited to get a chance to talk with you. You went off to JCK. Sounds like it was a great time, the land of uh, you know, dry air and gambling. And then uh you had a lot of great conversations about marketing. It seems, at least to me, that marketing is kind of going through this um real shift, this metamorphosis right now. Um, can you just give me, just give me an idea? What is the lay of the land when it comes to marketing? It seems like some things uh old techniques are kind of falling out of favor and new techniques around AI are starting to get picked up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. You know, what you kind of mentioned here with AEO, AI engine optimization on the rise, and all new LLMs coming into play, marketing is definitely changing because not only do we not or want to rather rank on Google, we want to rank on Chat GPT, Claude, and other, you know, LLMs that are ranking jewelry stores type of thing. So when someone puts a question in to AI, we want to make sure that we're there as well as our traditional SEO and our social media and our Google reviews, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, so I picked 10 topics, 10 marketing things over the years. And I wanted to ask, do these even still matter anymore? And I want you to be totally, don't be biased on this one. Let's let's let's give it to the people what they want to know. Because like I've been with Punchmark for nine years, just already nine years. Um and what what's interesting is like back in like 2018, we used to do like social media for some of our clients. And it was like a real pain in the neck, but it was all about like building this social media following. And like we used to research hashtags and like which ones were good. Um, now I don't even think that's like really worth your time a lot of the times. Now there's like other stuff, but you can also tell me that. So um maybe we'll do 10, 10 topics on is this even worth it? And then we can kind of expound upon it. Um, how's that sound?
SPEAKER_02Sounds perfect.
SPEAKER_01All right, here we go.
Traditional SEO Still Drives Product Discovery
SPEAKER_01Doesn't matter. SEO ranking for like search engines, like Google.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, definitely still relevant because at the end of the day, right, if you ask a question into Google, obviously you're gonna get that AI generated summary off the top. However, if you're still looking for, let's say, a Garnet necklace and you just put in Garnet necklace, AI has nothing to do with that. So that is going to be your traditional SEO. That is going to be how are your products title tagged, mapped, categorized, and described on your website to make Google happy and make the visibility all the much more better, as well as shopping products on the top of the Google search bar for the shopping organically. That is again SEO and especially product SEO. So that is definitely still relevant.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it seemed like uh SEO was about pages and a website ranking back in the day. And now it's almost like you want to have certain things rank, like you want your products to rank higher, and you want your um, you know, your about us to rank higher. And it's not necessarily like I just want my homepage to be at the top. It's like I feel like it's almost like the products are more niche kind of rankings. It's it's sort of interesting.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Yeah. Now with the introduction of e-commerce online and all that fun stuff, you know, some people don't need to come into the store to find what they want. And that's where SEO is still massively in play.
SPEAKER_01Nice.
AEO For Ranking Inside AI Answers
SPEAKER_01Now let's do the other EO. AEO, does this still matter? I feel like there's a lot of changes in the in the AI world. Uh, I can't even keep up with them. Other people are just totally dialed in, and it's like a full-time job for them to stay on top of it. Where does AEO even fit in? Is it the whole the whole hog at this point?
SPEAKER_02Right now, it it definitely is, I I think still in its growth phase. So obviously, depending on who you talk to, as far as AI bros, I guess, if you will, too. Um, it depends on it depends on if you think that the bubble is going to pop or if it's going to take over, type of thing. Right now, it's still in that growth phase where we're not really sure, and there can't be, you know, either answer isn't necessarily 100% right. So right now, absolutely for questions regarding engagement rings and questions about fashion jewelry, the difference between 10 karat, 14 karat, the rest type of thing. Informational news and informational facts about jewelry, your website, your store is definitely prevalent at the moment. So, yes, AEO is definitely up there.
SPEAKER_01And we just launched some exciting AEO tools. So everyone check that out. They're all on our blog. So, all right. What
Virality Beats Follower Counts
SPEAKER_01about this one? Here we gotta we're gonna get off the off the beaten track. Let's get into this one. Social media following doesn't matter at all.
SPEAKER_02Hot take potentially, hot take alert, but no, it doesn't necessarily matter. Virality is the thing that matters more right now, especially on TikTok. Um, you could have 50 followers on TikTok and get a video with over a million views, depending on you know what kind of hot topic or you know what kind of video you're putting out there. And from there, you know, obviously people are going to recognize your name, dig a little deeper, and maybe they will follow you thereafter, but it's not necessarily a necessity at this point anymore.
SPEAKER_01It's really, I mean, right on that topic, you're you're saying having something go vir uh viral. Uh just yesterday, this is happening in my hometown. Uh, there's a little gift card shop in my hometown called Heartwood Studios. Um, I have some of my work there, and they just had a Instagram reel pop off for um, it's it's currently at like three and a half million views or something like that. Like it doesn't really make any sense. They painted their um their storefront in like one of their doors kind of fun, and it just went crazy. Uh, they gained like 2,000 new followers off of it directly from that reel. They're all like really excited about it. Uh, but it's also kind of like I wonder if it'll convert to sales in any way. Um I don't really know if it does, but I think it's kind of more along the lines of uh I've always considered it a vanity metric. Um, and it's like what can you do to activate your your followers beyond that? So um, yeah, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think in the case of a gift card shop too, I think it'll be more of a destination to go to.
SPEAKER_01I agree.
SPEAKER_02Once it's viral, you're like, oh, I want to go there.
SPEAKER_01How about this one?
Engagement Rate Over Bounce Rate
SPEAKER_01This one used to be a hot topic back in like 2018. Bounce rate. This is like when people go to your website and they uh leave after, I think it's within three seconds or five seconds, I forget what the actual cutoff is. Does bounce rate matter anymore?
SPEAKER_02Not as a major KPI. So instead of bounce rate, we now like to look at engagement rate because they can stay on, let's say, right, someone clicks on an ad or your Google ranking on your website gets to the landing page and opens up the landing page and then gets diverted. Let's say they were with their friend, they're gonna now talk to them for two minutes, and they're you know, your landing page is technically not bounced because she didn't leave, right? But the phone's still open, the landing page is still on there, and now the timer is ticking, right? Two minutes, but she hasn't done anything. So now what we're looking at is engagement rate. They opened it, and then what do they do on that page? Did they click on shop now? Did they click on book an appointment? Did they, you know, go ahead and visit multiple different pages on your website? Because that at the end of the day is more beneficial to know than let's say if someone came on your website and dipped within three three seconds, or if they stayed on two minutes and didn't do anything. So what we need to know is um, you know, what did they do when they got to the landing page? Did they get their scroll, realize it wasn't for them, and leave? Okay, you know, maybe we can track that and and look into that a little bit more. But maybe they got there and you know, honestly, the the younger generations are quite quick on landing pages nowadays. Three seconds, you can get a lot done.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I guess that would technically be a bounce, but because they said, hey, let's shop now within that three-second mark, it's technically not a bounce, and the engagement rate goes up.
SPEAKER_01That's uh it's a just a different way of looking at it. And I I think I agree with you. Uh, bounce rate also had to do a lot with uh do you have a pop-up? And if you had a pop-up, man, it tanked your engagement rate. Yeah, I I'm just not a fan of pop-ups in general, but I can see the utility of them. We even use pop-ups occasionally inside of site manager because they are effective. But I will say, uh, yeah, when we used to look at bounce rates, I wasn't, it didn't see it seemed like we were missing something. Okay, let's do this one.
Email Marketing Metrics That Actually Matter
SPEAKER_01Emails, open rates, subscriber counts. Does anybody even read them anymore? I don't even know if people read my emails anymore. What do you think as far as a marketing tool?
SPEAKER_02So this one's a little bit gray for me. Yes and no. The open rate, if you're above 30%, you're doing great. If it's under 30%, there are some, you know, benchmarks and things that we we can look at to really move forward with. Subscriber count, it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily matter. So obviously, with segments and lists and your different clientele uh in your store, you want to make sure obviously that you're not bombarding them and then every email that comes their way is kind of a little bit more special and tailored to their lifestyle or where they're at in their in their life. But as far as you know, general um subscriber count or open rates, not necessarily the best metric to look at as a whole.
SPEAKER_01We're, I mean, it's no secret. Punchmark is actually doing a lot of research into uh finding ways that we can communicate, not just in emails. Uh emails work great for, I don't know, probably like 30 to 50% of our client base. But then like we'll send like a lot of this information that is it is important, and it's just can't guarantee an open. So we either have to send a lot of emails, which annoys people, or we have to send it uh through a different channel. And we're looking at, you know, communicating with our clients via text. Um, I don't know, it's just it's a weird one. It's so antiquated, but at the same time, it seems to be the gold standard of business. So what do I know? I guess. But all right, everybody, we're gonna take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor.
Sponsor Stratus Estate Buyers
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Facebook Still Works For 50 Plus
SPEAKER_01And we're back. Let's talk about this one. Facebook. And I mean the big blue app, like the actual Facebook.com doesn't matter at all. I don't know what you do on Facebook anymore. Besides make events, actually, is the only thing it's good for.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm gonna ask you this Facebook as in, and this is separate from Instagram, but Facebook as in putting ads on Facebook or posting to Facebook.
SPEAKER_01I think both. Do either of those work? They do.
SPEAKER_02So ads would work for your older audience. Let's think 50 plus estate vintage milestone anniversary folks, that is what would work on Facebook ads specifically. If you're looking at anything 50 and under, definitely go towards Instagram, TikTok, the works. Now, as far as organic posting, Facebook is interesting in that it is a nice thing to engage your following list there. So, like let's say you have an event, like you said, going on in the store. You create the event, you create a post surrounding the event, and then what you can do in your comment section is tag at top fans, at everyone in that page, in that group, so that they can engage and kind of look at oh, okay, hey, this is going on at XYZ jeweler. I'm definitely interested because it's right up my alley. Let me put in interest type of thing. As far as your general, like, you know how on Instagram obviously you're posting, congratulations to this couple for getting engaged with um, you know, my diamond type of thing, or um other kind of in-store promotionals or or funny kind of reels and stuff like that. Not necessarily super prevalent on Facebook. Um, but yeah, that is also just my take as well.
SPEAKER_01Man, it's I don't understand the utility of Facebook anymore. It used to be the end all be all. And now I think all of the goodness of it is just on Instagram. But I will say, dude, Instagram Shop works for me. I I just bought something off of it recently. I bought a piece of jewelry. I'll tell other people it it's really exciting. Um, I got for as a gift these little dangly earrings and they're little pocket knives. Have you ever seen they're like sharp, but like uh they're kind of cool. They're like folded up and they're really, really beautiful. Um, but when you can take them out and you can open them up and they're little knives. But I saw them on a Facebook ad, and uh, you know how the retargeting goes? I was like, wow, I love these. And um, so there you go. I guess Instagram's still still collecting dollars off of me. There you go. Next
Blogs That Feed SEO And AEO
SPEAKER_01one. What do you think about blogs? Uh, like writing long form content, posting it to your website. What's your thoughts on blogs?
SPEAKER_02Definitely still relevant, and this also circles back to AEO. So, not necessarily the quantity, because remember in the old days it would be like pump out as many blogs as you possibly can to get as much information out there for SEO purposes, etc. etc. Now, less blogs, we don't need to go crazy, and more informational, again, kind of FAQ style bullet points information. That is what's going to do well. And again, that's what feeds AI the you know parameters of what your store does and all the rest. So, yes, in my opinion, it is definitely still relevant.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that the blogs are just one of the most direct ways to print and shout the source of uh truth out into like the world. Um, you can do it peripherally through like you know other types of posting content and uh you know having lots of content geared towards that on your page. But I think in the end, having like a some good blogs that really that are written by a human, especially, uh, I do find is useful. We're trying to do it at Punchmark. I will just say it's just very manual sometimes. It feels very uh archaic uh at some points where I'm just like, wow, or really, I'm still writing this stuff and I've been doing it for nine years. It's like, huh? Well, I guess that's what that's what gets uh the engines fed. So all right. On the same topic, maybe um more archaic and I but still useful.
Reviews Build Trust And Rankings
SPEAKER_01What are your thoughts on reviews? I I would probably say Google reviews because those are the only ones that I really care about. But what do you think about Facebook reviews also?
SPEAKER_02Definitely still relevant. That is honestly the bread and butter of a lot of the jewelers that I talk to. Reviews are huge. Um so if you're getting reviews often, and even if you lose reviews, because that does happen to some clients sometimes where Google will remove reviews. And again, that's you know how you rank organically. It has a lot to do with people coming into the store because they saw, oh, everybody's been so you know, welcoming here, or they said nice things, blah blah blah. That is definitely um a metric that matters. Even for instance, I had a store once, I saw that someone had left a 2.5 star review and it it affected their their business from there and it had you know, type of thing. So it's like definitely still relevant. I I know it might sound archaic, but definitely, you know, relevant for jewelry stores.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's not on my list, but does Yelp matter at all anymore? Is that is that a thing?
SPEAKER_02So it definitely does. I mean, there's some people that still use Yelp. I mean, if you want to look at reviews on Yelp, they can be hilarious. Our sales manager and I, Thomas, at one RJO show about two years ago, were dying laughing over a restaurant's review.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02On Yelp. And you know, it can be fun if you just if as a little social media platform, if you want to go and look and and listen to it or read it rather. And uh, but it's not as prevalent, obviously, as Google.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I look at the Google reviews, it does seem to give you a good snapshot, but also sometimes it's like I can't really tell the difference between 20 reviews and 200 reviews. You know, they're kind of all all the same thing at a certain point to me. So I guess once you run up the score enough, to me, I'm like, I think that there's diminishing returns, but uh maybe that's just me as like a shopper. Um, I don't know anything about the actual business of it. But on the same kind of uh era, I guess.
Hashtags Lose Power For Growth
SPEAKER_01I mentioned it before. What do you think about hashtags? Do they matter? I don't think they matter.
SPEAKER_02They don't matter. They're great for categorization at this point, but growth? Not really. Nope.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that one is it used to we used to back in the day. Remember when Instagram used to let you put 30 hashtags on every post and used to have to like go in and comment on your post and dump all your hashtags in there. Oh my gosh, it was like so manual. I had like a copypasta and like a notes doc that I'd have to paste in. And that seemed like it mattered. But now on Instagram, you can't even follow your uh you can't even follow hashtags anymore. You used to. So like I used to follow watercolor, which was like a really nice one because you see watercolor from all over. But now uh I'm just not convinced they do anything. No, no, for hash or for categorization again, yes, but on the okay, so the last one, be gentle with this one.
Podcasting Builds Authority And Attention
SPEAKER_01What about podcasting? Does this do anything? There was like an era of like everybody had a podcast and then there was a die-op, and now I'm just kind of I just sort of lived through it. Does podcasting do anything?
SPEAKER_02I think you're gonna like my answer.
SPEAKER_03Oh, good.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I think the podcasting is is big. Um mainly for authority building. And if you are doing you know, local ads, audio ads, radio type of ads that you can put on, you know, pop up podcasts within a certain radius, I think that also helps. Um so yeah, definitely. Because podcasting, you know, I mean anybody can say what they want about it. I like it, but it is something that is updated regularly. It's definitely weekly. We have you know daily types of podcasts, and it stays relevant. And if you're an ad or a snippet of something that props up in a podcast, you're doing good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's such an interesting one. It's the uh what really sold me on podcasting initially, and what's so fascinating to me about it is that it can demand attention for so long, which is you I mean, when we look back on what we were just talking about, we talked about bounce rate, we're talking about three seconds. Our intro is three and a half seconds or four seconds. It's like we don't even say the title until we're four and a half seconds in. And if people are listening to this, they're gonna be, you know, 23 minutes in. And I think that's really interesting that like it's one of the few mediums that you'll actually engage with for very long amounts of time. And I think that there is something to be said about the authority building, but I don't know. I I'm just doing this because no one's told me to stop yet and I enjoy it. But at the same time, I have seen a lot of podcasts that I really enjoy come and go. And I sometimes wonder if there's like a, you know, a strategy behind those kinds of things, or if they just kind of like lost their luster for it. I don't know. It's uh it's an interesting one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it is I, you know, I'm a regular podcast listener to a lot of different things, but uh I don't know. Yeah, after 2020, that was like the big boom.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Do you have any uh do we have any clients that have podcasts? So this is just me like kind of talking out my ear.
SPEAKER_02Yes, actually. Um David Douglas has a podcast. Oh, really? Uh Doug.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, oh cool.
SPEAKER_02I'm not, I don't, I'm forgetting. Forgive me, Doug, if you're listening, but I'm forgetting his his podcast name at the moment. But I do know he has a podcast every week, I believe, which is really cool.
SPEAKER_01A century of legacy and luxury. That's the one. Very cool.
SPEAKER_02There it is. Because they're 100 years this year. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, how cool is that, man. And yeah, it looks like they got a couple episodes in there. Um, yeah, 15 episodes. Neat. I'll have to check that out. Yeah, it's just like one of those things. If I if I had a jewelry store, man, I'd I'd probably I'd probably do something, maybe monthly, but it's easy for me to say. Um,
Investing In Foundations That Last
SPEAKER_01when it comes to all this kind of stuff, it seems like things are changing all the time. I sometimes wonder if uh jewelers get are hesitant that the they'll invest into something. For example, they put all their stock into building great landing pages, and then in a year it won't be as relevant anymore. Is that a real concern, or do you think that there is some lasting effect for these these things uh beyond just like the the short-term gain?
SPEAKER_02I think there is some definite lasting effect um across the board because how you know, obviously things change quite quickly, but there are some things that move slowly. Like obviously, you know, we tell our clients on the website update you know your website for a refresh probably every two, three years just to kind of keep the design up to date. Again, that's kind of that's lasting in today's day and age, especially on digital. So um, you know, fear not. If you're putting a ton of work in to landing pages, it is definitely still relevant. It is definitely still out there.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Well, and hope if people want to learn a little bit more um from you or uh maybe sign up for some marketing activities for their website, uh, where can they reach you?
SPEAKER_02Hope at punchmark.com. And there is also a marketing consultation page on punchmark.com that you can look over our stuff and book a consultation with me.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Hope. And everybody, thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week, Tuesday, with another episode. Cheers. Bye. All right,
Closing Notes And Next Week
SPEAKER_01everybody. That's another show. Thanks so much for listening. My guest this week was Digital Marketing Manager at Punchmark, Hope Belair. You can learn more about Hope and the marketing program at Punchmark by going to punchmark.com and booking a free marketing consultation. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, Michael Burpel. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cockham. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and leave us feedback on punchmark.com slash loop. That's L O U P E. Thanks, we'll be back next week Tuesday with another episode. Cheers. Bye.
