MARKETING
This Is Why No One Uses Your Content [Rose-Colored Glasses]
“Isn’t it obvious?”
How many times have you asked this? That phrase often comes out when you realize some request or suggestion you thought you conveyed wasn’t acted on.
This signal amplification bias (as psychologists call it) explains how most miscommunication happens. People routinely fail to realize how little they actually communicate to their colleagues.
In other words: People believe they said a lot more than they really said.
The remote work trend no doubt exacerbates this phenomenon. Email, text messaging, Slack, and Zoom create conditions that seem to promote miscommunication.
And don’t think you’re safe because your close team shares some kind of mental shorthand. Researchers found that miscommunication happens more frequently among people in close relationships. (My wife just held up her hand to say something.)
I often see challenges arising from miscommunication (or under-communication) between sales and marketing teams.
Miscommunication derails sales and #marketing alignment, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
For example, a B2B technology client I worked with last month asked me to help align their sales and marketing teams. The sales team wasn’t using much of the content the marketing team created. Instead, sales reps would create their own content or use older content assets.
Worse, they’d request new content pieces from the marketing team, causing a backlog of requests and conflicting priorities for marketing (should they continue their existing thought leadership plan or accommodate the sales teams’ requests?
This kind of challenge is well documented in sales enablement and B2B content marketing circles. Interestingly, recent Heinz Marketing research found both sales and marketing teams named “using the most up-to-date and effective content” as their top challenge.
“Wait a minute,” you might say. “Both teams agree that using up-to-date content is the No. 1 problem. So why not tell the sales team to use the new content or tell marketing to make better content?”
That seems obvious. And my client even tried it. The sales team communicated that they needed better content. Marketing agreed to produce it but delivered this message, “You’d better use the new things we create.”
Spoiler alert: The problem didn’t go away. If anything, it got worse.
The teams didn’t suffer from a content quality problem. They didn’t have a usage problem. They had a communication problem.
Poor sales and #marketing alignment typically isn’t a content quality or usage problem. It’s a communication problem, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
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2 sides of the same problem
Yes, both teams agreed that using the most up-to-date and effective content is the biggest challenge. But that one challenge means different things to both groups. And that insight offers the key to solving the problem.
For sales, the challenge of using the most up-to-date content comes from struggling to find the right pieces and (most importantly) understanding how to use them.
For the marketing team, the challenge arose from creating new pieces to satisfy the sales team. In other words, they created new pieces to attract the sales team’s attention instead of the audience’s. That made the new content less effective. So, when sales did find and use the new pieces, they weren’t satisfied with the results and requested something new (again).
Neither got what they wanted.
The answer might seem obvious to you. But it wasn’t to them.
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Marketing-led sales enablement saves the day
You’ve probably heard my bumper-sticker style slogan before, but it bears repeating: 90% of content strategy has nothing to do with content. But it has everything to do with communication.
90% of #ContentStrategy has nothing to do with #content. But it has everything to do with communication, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
For my client, the way forward turned out to be better communication for sales enablement.
The marketing team began creating guidelines and instructions to enable the sales team to use the right content pieces in the right way. Every time marketing developed thought leadership content (a white paper, presentation, a bylined article, etc.), they’d also develop instructions on how to present the piece. And they started offering training to help the sales team act as informed storytellers.
As a result, the teams developed a much closer relationship with the content experiences they created for their prospects. They jointly built a process to identify a prospect’s main pain points, choose the right content to help them, and measure how well the offered content resonated.
This company stopped looking at sales as the final distribution channel of sales materials. Instead, sales became an opportunity for a personalized, intelligent, content-driven experience that delivered value to a potential or existing customer.
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Did you make yourself clear?
It’s easy to assume you’ve effectively communicated all the expectations, responsibilities, and processes your content strategy requires. After all, you work in it Every. Single. Day.
But you’d be surprised at the oversights and inefficiencies that go undiscovered.
Not long ago, I worked with a client at a Fortune 100 insurance company. I discovered that one critical part of the company website required a lengthy, manual process with many potential points of failure for every update.
Someone would email the necessary change to a freelancer, who then returned a formatted package of HTML files. Those files were uploaded to a server in the IT department and then moved to the webserver to go live.
I asked the person in charge of it how long they’d been doing it that way. “10 years,” he replied. “Who knows that you do it this way?” He shrugged and said, “I assume everybody knows. I’m not doing this in secret. It goes without saying that this is a critical part of the website.”
Turns out, no one knew.
If you find yourself saying, “Isn’t it obvious?” or “That goes without saying,” pay close attention to the rest of your sentence. Chances are, whatever you think could go without saying needs to be said.
Just saying.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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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