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The key to marketing momentum

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Most marketing fails to deliver its maximum potential. And the reason is simple: lack of prioritization. 

“If we just had more time and resources then we could produce a better result.”

This might sound familiar. In fact, most marketing teams are drowning in work, overwhelmed with requests, and unable to keep track of everything that’s happening.


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I’ve worked with marketing teams of all sizes across a wide range of industries and it’s often the same scenario — complete chaos. You’re not alone.

If marketing organizations hope to deliver on the promise of marketing then we must address and fix this fundamental problem. Marketers have a responsibility to recognize and accept that this problem is within their control. 

It’s time for ruthless prioritization.

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Accepting limitations

Capacity is arguably the biggest challenge facing marketing teams. In today’s environment there are so many options and avenues to explore in order to pursue the goals of marketing.

There are dozens of ways to reach your ideal customers with new channels and distribution methods popping up constantly. Change is the only constant of marketing. It’s nearly impossible to keep up with the persistent barrage of updates and algorithms. And new tools and technologies lure us in with their bold promises of better, faster, and easier results.

On top of it all, the marketing organization is inundated with innumerable requests that pile up and create a massive logjam. 

When will we get all of this work done? And how will we ever achieve our goals?

If we are to be successful as marketers we must first accept our limitations. After all, we have finite time, resources, and energy. 

There is an important difference between the limit of what we can do and the limit of what we can do exceptionally. The most successful marketing teams are the ones that focus on the latter and not the former, which happens to be the lower limit.

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I’m fond of the analogy from Jerry Weinberg who calls it the “Law of Raspberry Jam”. The more you spread it, the thinner it gets.

For our marketing efforts to be impactful we must stop spreading ourselves, our budget, and our team too thin.

The key to marketing momentumThe key to marketing momentum

Prioritizing ruthlessly

As marketers, we like to think that great marketing should be complicated or complex. After all, doesn’t more effort and involvement imply, and justify, an increased outcome?

There isn’t enough capacity, time, or budget to waste on marketing that doesn’t work. We must be critical of every initiative from the beginning before embarking down a road destined for disappointment.

For every initiative we undertake, we must understand how big of an impact it will have on our results and how confident we are in our ability to achieve that impact.

In short, we must prioritize ruthlessly.

Prioritizing ruthlessly is a simple process that:

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  1. Applies an objective and consistent evaluation filter to every initiative and commitment
  2. Rigorously focuses on ensuring confidence and consensus among decisions
  3. Allows the marketing organization to evolve and make smarter bets over time

In other words, every initiative must pass a trial by fire. And every decision is revisited, reviewed, and used to tweak the prioritization process. 

The obvious outcome is that only a few priorities emerge as worth executing. But the secondary outcome is just as valuable, if not more-so.


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Stop turning around

Imagine taking a road trip and making a few wrong turns. No big deal, right?

Now imagine making wrong turns so often, and needing to turn around time and again, that you run out of gas before you reach your destination.

That’s exactly how most marketing teams approach their marketing. Taken off course time and again from internal requests, the promise of a new channel, or adopting new technologies.

Prioritizing ruthlessly helps prevent your team from wasting time, money, and effort on useless activities, assets, and endeavors that wouldn’t have a major impact anyway. In other words, it stops your team from having to turn around more than necessary.

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Marketing strategy is what sets the final destination. Ruthless prioritization is the GPS system to keep your team on the fastest and most direct route.

How to prioritize ruthlessly

There are four steps to prioritizing ruthlessly and the entire process is collaborative, fosters useful discussion, and takes little time.

Here are the steps, demonstrated via example of a marketing team considering which marketing events to pursue and invest in.

Step 1: List out all of the potential activities, efforts, or decisions

Write down every event and the high-level details (name, date, brief description). Share the list with the team who will help evaluate the potential alternatives to select from. Everyone will have their own opinions and biases of which events are best, which should be chosen, and which are a waste of time. These opinions aren’t bad (they might actually be right), but they can’t be accepted blindly.

Step 2: Map the list of items onto the prioritization matrix

One at a time, place each event onto the map based on the two axes:

  • Potential: How much will this move us towards our goal and produce the desired result?
  • Confidence: How certain are we that we can realize the expected impact?
The key to marketing momentumThe key to marketing momentum

For instance, one event may have a huge attendance of ideal customers (a high potential) but it may be our first time attending that event (low confidence).

The team — as a group — decides where to place the item on the map. This is where the discussion and debate enter the picture. Go back and forth until the team comes to a consensus on a reasonable place for the item.

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During this mapping process, the team can discuss ways to mitigate risks, improve odds, and thereby move the placement of items on the map. For example, attending a big event for the first time is a risk and constitutes low confidence, but perhaps there are partners you could work with to increase the confidence of being able to successfully participate or sponsor the event. If so, that would raise the confidence of attending the event.

Step 3: Identify the Top Choices

Items located in the top right quadrant of the map will reflect those that have a high potential of success and that the team has a high degree of confidence in achieving. These are the top choices, but we’re not done yet. It’s time to be even more ruthless in our prioritization by passing each of these items through a series of filtering questions.

If there are too many items in the top right quadrant, take only those items that fall within the extreme top right corner of the map and continue on.

Step 4: Evaluate & Reject Options

The last step is to take each item and ask the following questions, keeping in mind that eliminating options is desirable. If too many options pass through your filtering questions then the team’s assumptions or objectivity may be faulty.

Here are the questions to answer for each option:

  • Why now? Justify the immediate need and identify dependencies.
  • What’s better? Compare the alternatives to this option and ensure it is the superior choice.
  • What if we don’t? Uncover the risks of not choosing this option, or if it is chosen and fails.
  • Are we ready? The final question to ensure that the team accepts this as a priority.

After answering each of these questions for the remaining items, the decision will become clear. The items that have survived this quick yet rigorous process are worthy of becoming full fledged priorities—and nothing else.

These are a starting set of filtering questions you can use. As your team embraces the process and revisits the outcomes of their choices, they will develop more filtering questions that will help in further tightening the selection criteria.

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Read next: 6 steps to help you prioritize tasks when everything is a priority

Building marketing momentum

Prioritizing ruthlessly doesn’t end once you decide and commit to the finite set of actions you and your team will pursue. Having a retrospective at the conclusion of every effort is a vital part of reflecting on whether or not it was a valuable priority to have selected. 

Whenever an initiative is completed and it was deemed a successful and worthwhile priority, celebrate with your team. And if it wasn’t successful or worthwhile, reevaluate the assumptions and data points used to accept it as a priority, then tweak the prioritization filter accordingly. This often takes the form of notes, guidelines, and additional questions you and your team develop over time.

Marketing isn’t going to slow down. In fact, it’s only going to keep accelerating. Things will continue to change because that’s what marketing does best.

The most successful marketing teams are those who can embrace the volatility, maintain the requisite speed, and prioritize ruthlessly.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.

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About The Author

The lost art of talking to customersThe lost art of talking to customers
Tim Parkin is a consultant, advisor, and coach to marketing executives globally. He specializes in helping marketing teams optimize performance, accelerate growth, and maximize their results.
By applying more than 20 years of experience merging behavioral psychology and technology, Tim has unlocked rapid and dramatic growth for global brands and award-winning agencies alike.
He is a speaker, author, and thought leader who has been featured in AdAge, AdWeek, Inc, TechCrunch, Forbes, and many other major industry publications. Tim is also a member of the American Marketing Association, Society for the Advancement of Consulting, and an inductee to the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame.

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples

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!

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Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists

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Why We Are Always 'Clicking to Buy', According to Psychologists

Amazon pillows.

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

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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.”

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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.”

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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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