MARKETING
How to Use Empathy Mapping for Epically Effective Ads
Essentially an empathy map is a process where you’re going to actually work, talk about, or discuss and document someone else’s point of view.
It’s their perspective, it’s their belief system, it’s their emotions, it’s their worldview.
We are trying to dial all of these components to build a foundation for everything we’re going to be doing on the advertising side.
Advertising Costs Money, Right?
Since advertising costs money (lots of money in some cases), you want to be able to try and do your utmost to hit the mark as quickly as you can out of the gate. This is where a lot of the greatest click-through rates will come when you understand what the process is.
It allows you to go beyond superficial stuff, and really try and get an understanding of what your client’s environment is like at the moment.
For example, I was talking to a client in the divorce space, a highly emotional area, but in this case, it was from the woman’s perspective.
What is actually going on within this particular circumstance that a woman could be in? It was particularly insightful to understand what their daily worldview looked like so we could get inside what’s really going on.
What Does “Getting Inside” a Worldview Mean?
It focuses on six main questions:
- What does she see here?
- What does she think?
- What does she say?
- What does she do?
- What is her pain?
- What is the gain she’s looking for?
Again, it’s all about going through this in an interactive process, which we’re going to do today to understand what it is.
For example, what does she see? What does it look like? What does this problem look like? What is it? What surrounds her from day to day? What kind of office is she seeing? What kind of research? What kind of things is she looking at on YouTube? What problems does she actually encounter with what she sees? Where’s the conflict going on inside her mind? What does she hear? This is what her family says. This is what her friends say. Who is really influencing her, in her day to day? Is it the internal chatterbox? If so, what is that internal chatterbox telling her?
We’re all trying to figure out as much as possible because you can’t possibly interview a 100 or 400 people unless you have an epic market research budget. But you don’t need to!
You can find a lot of these answers just by doing some online research.
Where to Conduct Market Research
For example, YouTube. YouTube is a fantastic resource. Other resources where you can find this kind of information are Facebook Groups. If you just plug yourself into the right Facebook groups, you’ll find out information about what’s really going on.
You would be shocked at how many people have their own Facebook Groups for their business and don’t actually read the conversations that are going on them, even though they could tell you exactly what the pain points are of the people in their business.
If you don’t have a Facebook Group going, no problem.
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All you have to do is put any keyword into the search bar in Facebook, no matter what industry you’re in, and add yourself to the group and just go look for an hour at the things that people say and the questions that they ask. It will write your copy for you.
Again, you’re doing your utmost to try and figure out what’s really going on in your ideal customer’s mind, right? What’s, what’s really going on? What’s important to her? Try to imagine her motions, this is the important one. What moves her? What moves him forward?
What is happening at the emotional, core, gut, and amygdala types of emotion? What does she think? What is she looking for? What’s really driving? What’s in their dreams and aspirations?
Pay particular attention to any conflict that might be going on. Again, conflict is giving a sign that there’s a sort of yin and yang situation, where the perfect avatar is being pulled in one direction or the other.
Often, for example, in an agency, one of the things you would say is they are frightened of looking like an idiot in terms of making a mistake in the decision. If that’s what they’re feeling, that could be the environment that they’re working in, particularly in a larger company.
Again, the big obvious ones in there are:
- What is their pain?
- What are their biggest frustrations?
- What are the things that are stopping them from moving forward?
That’s going to give you examples of tripwires that you can use in your marketing, particularly on your funnel side.
What Risks is Your Target Customer Facing?
What are the risks your client is facing? What’s the number one risk that they might fear taking on?
That may be just one hook or one angle that you can use within an ad that will make the difference between a 0.5% click-through rate and a 2% click-through rate.
When we have people who come in and focus on weight loss, for example, the average weight loss ad that we see is something along the lines of:
“Hey, do you wanna lose five to 10 pounds in the next 90 days with having to change your diet?”
That’s a standard sort of lead-in on a weight loss ad.
When we actually go through an exercise like this and we say, “Are you sick and tired of walking into your closet and having that little black dress that you haven’t put on in 2 and 1/2 years, staring you in the face saying, “I miss you. When are we gonna get back together? When are you gonna be able to wear me again?”
I want to be the person that I was three years ago. I wanna look and feel like the best of my abilities, but gosh, that little black dress just stays on that closet shelf year after year after year, reminding me of what I used to be.
All of a sudden, you have a completely different conversation. That’s a completely different conversation in their mind around the frustration of that little black dress mocking them every single day they walked in their closet. One of those is facts and figures.
One of them is a punch right in the solar plexus, and when you can write with a punch right to the solar plexus and get inside the conversation that’s happening in their mind, that’s the difference.
MARKETING
YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]
Introduction
With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.
Types of YouTube Ads
Video Ads
- Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
- Types:
- In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
- Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.
Display Ads
- Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
- Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).
Companion Banners
- Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
- Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.
In-feed Ads
- Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.
Masthead Ads
- Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.
YouTube Ad Specs by Type
Skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Action: 15-20 seconds
Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
- Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
Bumper Ads
- Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
- File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 640 x 360px
- Vertical: 480 x 360px
In-feed Ads
- Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Headline/Description:
- Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
- Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line
Display Ads
- Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
- Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
- File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
- File Size: Max 150KB.
- Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
- Logo Specs:
- Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
- File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
- Max Size: 200KB.
Masthead Ads
- Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
- File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).
Conclusion
YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!
MARKETING
Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists
Amazon pillows.
MARKETING
A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots
Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.
To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.
Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots
Salesforce’s evolving architecture
It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?
“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”
Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”
That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.
“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.
Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”
Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot
“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.
For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”
Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”
It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”
What’s new about Einstein Personalization
Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?
“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”
Finally, trust
One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.
“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”
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