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Why You Should Treat Content Marketing Like a Golf Game [Rose-Colored Glasses]

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Why You Should Treat Content Marketing Like a Golf Game [Rose-Colored Glasses]

I don’t do golf. But one thing intrigues me about the game: The entire goal is to play the least.

Think about it. The winner is the person who swings their clubs the fewest times.

A smart content marketing approach should work in a similar way.

My clients often tell me they feel the content marketing team creates too much content. They say things like: “Everyone wants more content, but so much of what we create is wasted.”

At first, that seems counterintuitive. If they’re wasting content, why don’t they just produce less?

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Suggest that, and you’ll get this pushback: “If we produce less, we might waste a smaller amount. But everyone still wants more.”

Here’s what they mean: When the content team provides a fire hose of content, there’s too much waste – but everybody’s thirst is quenched. When the content team gives people a garden hose, less content goes unused – but everybody still feels thirsty.

This challenge isn’t confined to content marketing, by the way. I see it in marketing planning, too. Everyone in marketing and sales seems to think they need more. More content. More marketing. More leads. More opportunities. More sales.

More always seems better – or at least less risky. So, many content and marketing teams build their strategies to answer the question: “How do we get more?”

In golf, the goal is to play the least. #ContentMarketing strategies should work the same way, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

More isn’t enough

It took me a long time to figure out this content marketing conundrum. When I’d tell people more isn’t the answer, they’d ask “Then how much content should we produce?”

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I used to answer, “As much as you can be great at.”

I used to think you should deliver as much content as you can while maintaining the quality standards you’ve set (assuming you’ve set any.)

Now I realize that advice is wrong.

If the question of how to get more content drives your strategy, your strategy is doomed. You’ll never produce enough.

The better question comes from golf: How can you create more aces, eagles, and birdies?

In other words, how little is enough to win the game?

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Create your strategy around this question: How little #content is enough to win the game? says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Enough is enough

Any great concert, television series, movie, or novel makes the audience wish it would go on. They’re engaged, they’re moved – and they want more.

In fact, many great experiences come in shorter packages. The Great Gatsby numbers just 180 pages. The classic film Casablanca lasts only 100 minutes. The amazing TV series Better Call Saul just ended after six seasons of 13 episodes each.

Though the audience wanted more, the creators told stories exactly as long as they needed to be.

But how many times have you come away from a series saying, “That was pretty good, but it could have been three episodes instead of eight”? That’s a classic symptom of defaulting to more.

That’s not to say that long content or a lot of content can’t be effective. War and Peace wouldn’t be War and Peace if it weren’t 1,200 pages.

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However, I’ve found content and marketing teams feel most effective when the culture focuses on knowing how much is enough instead of chasing more.

In a perfect world, creative content workers would spend less time assembling content and more time thinking of innovative and remarkable content to create.

In a perfect world, #content marketers would spend less time assembling and more time thinking of remarkable content to create, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

In most businesses, though, it works the other way around. Content teams get stretched thin by to fulfill all the requests for too many projects. They can’t assemble digital assets fast enough to keep up with the fire hose of requests.

Here’s the punchline: Nine out of 10 times, a content audit reveals my clients aren’t producing too much content, but they’re usually creating too many digital assets.

I suggest they stop filling everyone’s days with assembling and producing assets.

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Instead, I tell them to figure out which content will be enough.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Focus on impact

Now when clients ask me now how much content they should produce, I tell them this: If you want to win at content marketing, produce as little as you need to get the impact you want.

Don’t aim to produce overwhelming amounts of content even if you can – and even if it’s great. Instead, aim to produce just enough to deliver the value you intend while creating the behavioral change you seek to have.

Get through the course in as few swings as possible.

Don’t ask how do we create more? Instead, ask what is enough?

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That question forces you to define an objective – an impact – to create and measure. It also forces you to define “enough.”

Enough to what? Enough content to create 10% more leads? Enough to acquire 1,000 subscribers? Enough to satisfy the sales enablement team with the budget you have?

Once you define “enough,” it’s game on for content golf. Play as little as you need to win. Focus on bringing your best game.

Let’s get to work on your swing.

Get Robert’s take on content marketing industry news in five minutes or less:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries

Watch previous episodes or read the lightly edited transcripts.

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Subscribe to workday or weekly CMI emails to get Rose-Colored Glasses in your inbox each week. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute



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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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