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00:00:01
Kiss, Marry, Kill: Marketing Edition
171 Plays6 days ago
Let's play a game ...
Who's ready to kiss, marry, or kill some marketing strategies? 😈
In this episode, Jess and Susan each share a thing they love right now, feel strongly about long-term, and loathe entirely in the world of marketing.
Their lists include:
- The hot, new algo-preferred post format on LinkedIn
- The highs and lows of automation in paid media
- How to build a strategic content calendar with AI tools
- Why balancing performance marketing and brand building is crucial for long-term success
That's Marketing, Baby is produced by Sweet Fish Media.
Ready to get your podcast production and promotion off your plate and under control? Book a call at sweetfishmedia.com.
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You can either spend your time on an endless treadmill of just creating, creating, creating, creating, and like none of it's going to get traction because there's so much noise as opposed to if you're going to take the time to make this thing, make that, and then put at least as much, if not more effort than getting it out to people.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to That's Marketing Baby. I'm Jess Cook, and I'm here with my amazing co-host, Susan Winograd. Hi, everybody. I'm back this week. I'm not on the road, so I was able to join. Yay! She's back, and she has the most amazing purple hair.
00:00:43
Speaker
Unbelievable. I'm just going for it at this point. They'll probably see it in social clips, but I'm like, I could either just be gray. So premature grayness runs in my family on both sides. So I have been dying my hair since I was like 24. And I've just gotten to the point where I'm like, this is a lot of trouble. And if it's going to be gray, I'd rather just have fun with it before I just give up.
00:01:02
Speaker
You look amazing. Thank you. I love it. Thank you. We have a fun one today. Yeah, I'm excited for this one. I got to give credit where credit is due. My teammate, Ariya Block at Island, he and I went to drive, Exit 5 Drive, a couple weeks back and had an amazing time, but he was a moderator for one of the breakout groups.
00:01:23
Speaker
And his idea to kind of like spur some conversation in this breakout group was to talk to the marketers in his group and see what things they would, in marketing, kiss, marry, and kill. And I loved that idea so much. And I was like, Ari, can I steal that for this one maybe? And he was like, yes, do it.
00:01:42
Speaker
By the way, Ari just launched his podcast, and it's called Believe in Brand. It's amazing. Oh, I like that name. It's so good. That's good. He has amazing guests. He is one of the most brilliant brand people I've ever worked with in my entire life. Give it a listen. But Susan and I thought it'd be really fun if we came to you today with a kiss. So something in marketing that we um just kind of like love right now. like We're feeling like very crushing on it like at the moment.
00:02:10
Speaker
a Mary, which is, you know, something we're like long-term invested in, fact and and a Kale, which is something we just completely loathe entirely. I assume I know those though. Like in media right now, there's a lot of loaves, unfortunately, so I'm going to do my best to be positive. Pick the one you loathe the most. All right, I'll do my best.
00:02:34
Speaker
OK, so I think we will start with the kiss, right? Let's do it. All right. So I was telling Des before this. I think what's kind of interesting is her her three are very different. Mine are different aspects of the same thing. so The 800 pound gorilla happening in paid media right now is everything's just getting very black boxy and automated. there's not really It's hard to talk about anything else right now because that is what is permeating everything that a media buyer does. It's a very awkward time because it does some things well and it does a lot of things not well. and I think that's what really drives my
00:03:11
Speaker
Kiss, Marry, Kill pieces. It's these little pieces of that greater thing that we're seeing happen because it's not just that things are becoming black boxy or automated. It's all of the little ah shrapnel that comes from those explosions, which can either be great or can be very painful.
00:03:28
Speaker
So all of mine are going to pretty much focus around that. But I think my kiss right now, and sometimes it flirts with the Mary. I won't. i won i I have really appreciated how much busy work I used to have to do on paid search that I don't have to do anymore. So I would say that's probably a kiss because there are parts that are going into loads, like that thin line between love and hate. Yeah. I do love that.
00:03:57
Speaker
I still remember back in the day where it really was just all about the bids. like There was no data around intent. Google really didn't help you. It was just straight, this is what I'm willing to pay for a click. And what that meant was you were exporting but spreadsheets with thousands of keywords and their current bids, all of their data, and then just basically plugging in a formula to figure out how much you should raise or lower your cost per click. to reach the the cost per acquisition target that you wanted. It was very young input in, input out. It was very math driven. There was no intent, really. there was no so Because of that, the keywords really were the intent. That was really the only data that you had.
00:04:40
Speaker
I like that that is no longer part of my life because it always felt like something that should be more automated than it was. It obviously just wasn't there yet. So I do appreciate that, especially being that I'm a strategy person. So I like being able to focus more on the 30,000 foot view of how we should be steering things as opposed to looking at cell D1 and plugging in a formula for what its cost per click should be. As a marketer, that's not how I like to spend my time. So I do appreciate from an automation standpoint that there is now user intent data behind the scenes that drives the decision making that a lot of these platforms use to accomplish whatever goal I tell it to accomplish.
00:05:22
Speaker
There are, like I said, there are parts of that that are going to fall into the other areas that I'm not fond of. But I do appreciate when I think about how I spend my time as a paid media person, I do like where the percentage of time is spent now relative to how it used to be spent back in the day. So that's my kiss. That's my thank you to the platforms.
00:05:40
Speaker
Does that mean back in the day when you were uploading all of this information, you were potentially paying way more than you needed to because you didn't have that information? or No, because you still have the information at the keyword level. So basically, you would have, here's the keyword, here's what your current cost per click is, here much here's how much you spent, and here's how much your your CPA is, right or your cost per liter, cost per sale, or whatever. So you knew what the outcomes were, so you could just sort of back into the math. not it you're you know If you're going like, OK, my conversion rate is this, and I'm paying this, it was just a very simple equation of like, well, I want it to be this, so I need to adjust the bid down x to this amount, x percent, or whatever it was. So you're literally just, I mean, it was like algebra that we did in middle school. you know Very much like 7x plus 8 is this. And so what does that mean that x is? That's really all it was. So you just didn't have intent data. The keyword was really at that point. That's what functioned as the user's intent. That was your hint as to what they were trying to do. OK.
00:06:37
Speaker
It just didn't do any of that for you. No, it didn't. I mean, nothing. There was there was nothing. yeah and When they initially released the automated bidding options, they didn't perform well. They rolled them out as like an option, but they never did particularly well. AI just wasn't refined enough yet. I i don't think they had all the they didn't have all the data inputs that they needed. ah used to be that like i mean Back in the day, you could only set up one conversion type and then they eventually let you set up more than one but you could really only see what the performance of one of them so it was kind of pointless so is it was very much an evolutionary thing yeah see it's kind of funny to think about now because i just take for granted going like oh here are my eight conversions and i want you to optimize it but you didn't have any of that way back when.
00:07:22
Speaker
So amazing. like One of my first roles out of college was a copywriter on Rice Krispies. And I wrote the descriptions for 200 plus Rice Krispie treats recipes on the Rice Krispies site. And like i I think about that now. Yeah. And like I could have just plugged in like the ingredients and been like, give me a name, and a cute name and a description for this. I know. And like I would have been done in seven minutes. You know what's so funny is one of my first jobs out of college, I was an editor at CircuitCity.com for video games and PCs and it was the same thing. Yeah. I was reading product descriptions all day long that my staff wrote and editing and uploading. It's so funny. And imagine now like
00:08:03
Speaker
done It's done so quickly. Right now. Yeah. I mean, that was months worth of work. And every season, every holiday, they'd come out with more recipes and i'd jump right into naming them and you know like giving them descriptions. I wouldn't have had a job. I know. I know. I was thinking that today. It's weird to think the stuff that we used to do had that ah humans no longer needed for that. It's wild. Yeah, it is. OK. That was a good kiss. Yeah, what's yours? My kiss is something I noticed this week. I've been telling everyone.
00:08:32
Speaker
And it is vertical video on LinkedIn, like portrait mode video on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn recently rolled out. They're kind of trying to take some of the functionality of an Instagram or a TikTok, right? Kind of the reels version where it's portrait kind of mobile format video and then you kind of like scroll the next one and scroll the next one. And they just added this to the the mobile version of the LinkedIn platform where they're pulling in portrait format videos for you to kind of like watch, decide if you want to continue watch or move on to the next one.
00:09:11
Speaker
And I noticed this, and I noticed that they're only pulling kind of the vertical format videos into those. And I was like, Oh, I want to give that a try. And so shout out to sweet fish, our podcast producers on this show, because they cut our clips for us. I was like, I want to try this. Can you do them in mobile format? And they sent me the versions and I uploaded one this week. And I kid you not, I got like,
00:09:37
Speaker
man, I can't even do the math in my head. It's like 18 times the impressions wow on average of a video post. Yeah. And so now I'm like, Oh, we have to capitalize on this. hot Right? Like, hurry do this before they change the algorithm again. So yeah, this is my kiss. Go back and find all your top performing video posts on LinkedIn.
00:10:01
Speaker
jump into Descript, cut them as vertical format, get a freelancer to do it for you. That's what I'm doing right now. Yeah. For Island videos and just start posting and like take advantage of this moment where they are preferred in the algorithm and get those impressions and try to get that growth because who knows when the next thing will come along and they'll be off of this, right? So yep strike while the iron is hot, cut your video in vertical format and And I feel like those trends last a little longer in LinkedIn sometimes. Maybe it's my perception, but I feel like when I compare that versus what I see happen like over on Instagram, it seems like when something starts to work on LinkedIn, it has a longer shelf life. And I don't know if it's just because there's less
00:10:43
Speaker
video content typically created there versus something like Instagram or if it's just the way their algorithm works, you know? Or a little bit of both. That's a really, really good point. It does. It lasts a little longer because they're trying to get the learning from it, understand who they want to position it in the algorithm. If it's even a feature they want to keep, they've been known to like add things like this and then kill it off a month later. So yeah, do it now. Hurry. Yeah. your gift Kiss Mary kill, but make it marketing. Yeah. but Yeah.
00:11:10
Speaker
All right, I guess we're going on to Mary. Mary. Okay. Okay. So this probably could work for me to be, honestly. It's something I've been using. For those of you who don't know, I think most people here probably know, but when I'm not a paid media consultant, my side hustle is I grow a candle and bath and body brand.
00:11:31
Speaker
I told them all about it last week, don't worry. Oh, you're so sweet. I didn't have a chance to listen yet because I was on the road selling stuff. and So what's been interesting over there is that it because it's just me, I've had to go back to being like scrappy e-com girl, which has been fun, right? So I'm not using paid media. I've built the entire thing through miles on my van going to shows and my Shopify store. And like it's been very organic.
00:11:58
Speaker
So as someone that is trying to do and it's hand by the way, it's a handmade business. So not only am I growing the brand, I'm making every damn thing that gets sold to anybody. So obviously, you know, there's obviously a time constraint piece because it is a side hustle. It's not my full time job. But The thing that I run into a lot, and this has been something that I've we've i've been candid about on here before too, is that like I'll just be like a deer in headlights about what to talk about or what to write about sometimes because i just I get so close to it that I feel overwhelmed. I don't know what to do, so I just don't do anything. And then like weeks have passed and I'm like, I have not posted anything. In social, I mean?
00:12:35
Speaker
yeah Yeah, or like email. And part of it, too, is to be fair to myself, when I'm on the road doing shows, it's exhausting. It's like I'm making all this inventory, I'm going, I'm selling the whole time, I'm driving back, and I'm dead for three days. So there's also an energy component to this. Yeah. So one of the things that I feel like a lot of people bemoan the AI factor in social media, where it's like, yes, of course. People are just going to jet chat at TPT and you know spewing out stuff. That's not what I'm talking about.
00:13:03
Speaker
there is so like my There's probably a million ones that do this. But the one that I've been using is I use flick dot.social. who And I use that for my Instagram growth, basically. So I was at the point where I'm like, I need a platform to schedule stuff out to help me do some of the heavy lifting because I can't research hashtags and all this stuff from scratch. right So I use them just for basic, because you can kind of keep collections of hashtags and then just choose them each time you do a post. So it's kind of a time saver just for that.
00:13:31
Speaker
They added an AI component called Iris on. okay I have been sincerely impressed. like It really understands my brand. like You give it some prompts and stuff, but then it'll also look at how you've talked on your messages, kind of like any special rules you want for how you say things. like You can input all of this stuff and it will spit out a proposed content calendar for you and tell you exactly what to shoot.
00:14:01
Speaker
whoa, like literally will be like, here are 14 you can tell it how many weeks worth of content you want. And it's it's not the same old stuff where it's like it understand that my brand has like kind of a gothic Victorian slayer to it. So it's given me in scene suggestions. Oh my gosh, this is wild. Yeah, it's really smart.
00:14:22
Speaker
And the thing that I like is like, it's not that you necessarily have to take it all exactly as it's told you, but it has relieved me of that overwhelm of feeling like I'm just going to stay. And even if I don't agree with what it's given me to do, I can edit it into something that I think will work great. And it's like, it just gets me over that hump of like,
00:14:40
Speaker
I don't even know what to write about. And the other thing it started doing is one of the things that's so big is it's like, oh, you have to use trending audio. I do not have time to go through and find the trending audio. Like I don't have time. It will email you when there is a new trend that it sees taking off. Yes. It analyzes that emails and like, and it's like, here is a trend. It will link you to example videos. It will give you suggestions on how to do it for your particular brands and products. This is amazing.
00:15:10
Speaker
crazy smart. What's it called again? It's called Flick Social. It's just Flick, F-L-I-C-K dot social. I am not an affiliate. This is not a paid message folks. No, they don't pay me for anything. i I heard about it initially just for like hashtag research and just kind of organizing and scheduling posts just to speed that part up so it wasn't so manual. And they just added this AI component like six weeks ago or something. That's what's crazy too. like It's so new and it's really smart. I was like, I can't imagine what this is going to look like as it gets better because I've been blown away with, I mean, just in the trends it sends are really good. They're totally doable. They're relevant. They're funny. like They're not just picking out random ones that have nothing to do with my business and sending them. They actually feel very talented.
00:15:51
Speaker
I don't want to sign up for this just to like, stay cool with my my tween. Yeah, you should. I mean, it's just it's fun to play around. Hey, how about that new that new trending sound? Yeah, I mean, it's like it will email you it's really helpful with hashtags like it'll put it into low medium and high competition for you. You can group them by like subject.
00:16:11
Speaker
So I have like a group of hashtags around like skincare and whip soaps. I have a group of hashtags for a handmade maker. So no matter what my post is about, I can just pick from the list and it'll put in the hashtags that I've chosen that I use their tool to research with. That is really cool. I also think you should immediately go by the URL scrappyecongirl.com.it.io.edu. Well, it's fun because I told you, I'm like, i've I've been thinking forever about creating separate content around like,
00:16:38
Speaker
building a like, especially for handmade makers, it's really hard hand making you stuff. I'm not gonna lie, like it's a whole other because then you're your production facility, which is make everything more complicated. But I'm like, I don't know how that works. And the yeah I told you, I'm like, I don't and people are not going to know who they're talking. Like, is this econ girl? Or is this a media girl? Because I do both. So it's it's a little confusing. I'm split right down the middle. You could be all of those things. It's okay. I mean, I'm i'm a complex woman. Yes. What was that song? I'm 81 flavors and then some 31 flavors and then some whatever it was.
00:17:08
Speaker
90s or 2000s. That's what I feel like right now. So I want to marry smart social AI, not like the regurgitated stuff, but the stuff that is truly useful that really, and it's not just that I feel like it's helping me. I actually think it does deliver entertainment and value to my users in ways that I wouldn't know how to do. like These are trends and sounds I would never find. Yeah.
00:17:29
Speaker
And some of them are really funny. And it's like, I've gotten dance people like, that was great. Like, I loved it. So it's nice because I feel like I'm not, it's not just that I'm checking a box and be like, there, I can say I scheduled social media. I feel like I'm doing it in a way that is actually very genuine to my brand. And it's actually entertaining the people that follow me. So it's been a huge win for me. I love that. Yeah. I'm looking it up immediately after this. My Mary is This isn't going to sound like new or exciting, but it's something that I've gotten better and better at as I've done this job longer and longer. And that is stacking distribution. So, you know, I think a lot of content folks, we write a blog post, we get a video produced, whatever. We put it in the couple of channels that we kind of run or we own.
00:18:14
Speaker
And we're like but myself on the back. I didn't cross that off the to do list. Don't put me in from like, cra and and I kind of got like a renewed sense of excitement about this again after drive exit five drive last week, which was just stacking as many of those distribution points on top of each other as you can. And the part of this that gets difficult, right, is that as a content marketer, I only am the owner of a few of those. so huh For example, at Island, I own social.
00:18:48
Speaker
I own a newsletter. I own the blog. So yes, I can check all of those boxes, but where you really get the power of stacking distribution and by stacking distribution, I mean just like you have a great piece of content. You want to put it in as many places as possible to get it in front of as many of the right eyeballs as possible. Yeah.
00:19:07
Speaker
And kind of those three channels that I own aren't going to do it. Yeah. And so I have to work really closely with growth, with my customer marketer, with my comms partner, with my brand partner, with my events team, like anyone who I can get their time and talk to. And I feel like I have a relevant story that they can use to make their job easier. I'm going to talk to them because for instance, I'm working on a a research report, Island's first research report, and I don't want to just put it on a landing page to have people download. yeah I want to keep paying behind this thing. I want to turn it into a webinar. I want to turn it into a talk, like a thought leadership talk that we can deliver at different events where we have speaker spots. I want to use it in social as infographics and put some paid behind it. I want to deliver an email nurture campaign that is just all about- You're like repurposing to the next level, basically. Exactly. It's just like how many places can I put this thing?
00:20:07
Speaker
that I don't directly own. And that means I'm gonna have to build some relationships. So yeah, I think it's, it's a long term play. It takes some work, it takes some relationship building, it takes some like, time and trust building, but like, that's our job, right? So And I feel like with such a better use of time, like you and I have talked about before, the use of time. And this was something we talked about with Ross Simmons when he was on too, where it's like, you can either spend your time on an endless treadmill, of just creating, creating, creating, creating, creating, creating. And like, none of it's going to get traction because there's so much noise. It's like you're making like making on a conveyor belt.
00:20:40
Speaker
just spewing out stuff that's just landing into a black hole. yeah As opposed to if you're going to take the time to make this thing, make that and then put at least as much if not more effort than getting it out to people because when you look at it, if you're a good writer and you're a good content marketer,
00:20:56
Speaker
it's not that it's not hard but it's like that part can come very naturally and so i feel like sometimes the comfort zone is just to continue to create more content right it's kind of like i know how to do that part and so. You'll see places they created eight bazillion pieces of content and the distribution is just been like are we did a linked in post we didn't post and there's nothing after it because that's just where their comfort zone is.
00:21:17
Speaker
Totally. I think that's such a great point. I just did a post on this on LinkedIn that was like, you have to actually think about where this is going to live before you create the thing. That's going to give you the way that you then create that thing. It's going to be so different than it would have been had you not thought about like where this is going to live. The way you structure it's going to be different. You're going to give yourself all these different opportunities to build in really interesting graphics that can be used as images and social posts or you bring them into your newsletter or they can be used like an ad creative right all of these things if you're thinking about where is this going to live before you jump into the creation of it man that piece of content is gonna be so much better for it yeah and i think
00:22:00
Speaker
That's a really good Mary too, because I don't think the need to do that is ever going to change. Never. And it's not something that many people are very good at. So I feel like when you look at, you and I were discussing how much, especially on the paid media side, how much has changed about how we've spent our time. I feel like that's something that everybody on the content side should marry very quickly.
00:22:20
Speaker
Like, Vegas wedding that, right? Get on the plane, go to the chapel, O Love, and seal the deal with that. Because like, you are going to need that forever. That is never going to change. And I don't think it's something that's really going to be able to be easily automated.
00:22:38
Speaker
Because to your point, AI can kind of suggest other versions of things to make, but you're going to have to do the legwork. It's still going to require humans. Yeah. The channels are going to change, the content's going to change, the formats that the algorithm prefers is going to change, but like the idea of just finding the right places to get that thing out and building the relationships in order to do that, that's a forever thing. That's love, baby. True love. True love.
00:23:04
Speaker
All right, now we get we're never going to go down the the thin line between love and hate. We're going to talk about killing. What do I want to stab? I will go first, and this is the downside to the automation thing, putting my paid media person hat back on.
00:23:21
Speaker
There are definitely things that I don't think it's better for humans to be in control of because we're probably not as good at it. I mean, there's certainly a day that these platforms have about how likely someone is to buy something based on what they've already done. There's certainly things like that. I will say that I feel like there has not been a very happy medium, at least in, and this is really, I'd say true for Facebook also, I think Facebook ads have faced a different problem than Google ads because they're inherently different beasts. So the way that Facebook has had to handle stuff, they kind of did to themselves. long way It's like they kind of painted themselves into that corner. And so I kind of understand why Facebook has become more of like tell us your objective, give us the creatives, we'll go figure it out. It's also a lot more top of funnel. So there's less sort of predictive stuff as a human aside from like creating local likes and interest groups. There's really and that's kind of stuff that Facebook can pretty much figure out, you know, they they can pretty much figure out who your user is.
00:24:20
Speaker
My kill is on the Google side. It has been very frustrating the way that they are really phasing out how much control you have over what your keywords match to. Because it used to be, even if you go now, and it used to be very clear, broad match, anything that's in that phrase you typed, any single word can be matched to any search query that has that term in it. It was very clear.
00:24:46
Speaker
Phrase match was, if I put in a keyword and these words are in that exact order and a larger query, that's cool. I want to show up for it. Very clear. Exact match, it has to be only this term they put in. Nothing else with it, just this. Got it.
00:25:03
Speaker
And it gave us a lot of control. I think the problem was it was used a lot to really overly control campaign structure and budget allocation and bidding and all that stuff, which once upon a time, like I said, that was needed, right? We had to do that.
00:25:18
Speaker
It's not that I necessarily think we needed it forever. I think that what Google has overlooked is the context in which some of these keywords live. So there are reasons sometimes why we have exact match because it might be a phrase that could apply. I mean, there's a lot of things that you add one more word onto it and the entire meaning of that changes and has nothing to do with your industry. Yeah.
00:25:40
Speaker
So that's been the hard part is that for larger industries that are very consumer driven and have a lot of search volume, Google is smarter. Where we run into problems, especially in the B2B world, is it does not understand technology type products. It does not understand software type products very well. So It's matching is not fantastic. And it's very, it's a lot looser than it used to be. Like if you, you know, I just told you about how the match types used to exist. If you want to have some fun, go look at how they define the match types now. And you'll be like, I don't really understand how does it make the decision between what's what? It's very unclear. It's basically like, Oh, exact is the closest thing to the query you put in. Raise match is kind of medium. And but yeah, it's not clear.
00:26:26
Speaker
So what makes it hard, like I said, is I run into it less in consumer and e-comm situations because there's so much volume that either A, Google understands it, B, we can insert some of that human control and it really doesn't upset your costs or matching too much. Like you can still kind of insert yourself because it it'll adapt. Where it's really hard is these B2B situations or software situations or highly tech driven situations where it's like,
00:26:53
Speaker
I'm working with a client right now that they basically do like risk assessment software for enterprise level IT t stuff. But it's it has a very specific application. It works very so it integrates with very specific platforms. And it's like it wants to show up for antivirus searches. That's not what it is. like It doesn't understand really niche nuances. And I can't stop it from doing that. Because if I just say exact match, no one searches for the exact match terms. So you won't get any volume.
00:27:22
Speaker
and If I go up to broad to get the volume, it starts matching us for all this crap that is not so not related or it's so tangential that the user is going to be like, why am I seeing this ad? so What's the best solve you've found for this so far? Right now, we've just been relying on phrase and exact match pretty much, but it still matches you for weird stuff. The cost per click is higher. like it just and it doesn't The problem is there's not enough search volume and aggregate for it to get much smarter. so it's like It took away the control to try and help it,
00:27:53
Speaker
And it didn't really give us anything to supplement it you know it's it's kind of like the answer that will make sure you're feeding back all of your your conversion data so it understands and i'm like. This is a six figure investment that goes to procurement department this is not something i can hook it into sales force that's fine.
00:28:09
Speaker
It's not gonna be it's like a year and a half later that it becomes a closed one thing in Salesforce that will be imported at Google's me like I don't even know who the hell that is anymore like I didn't even keep that Google click ID right so there's this very tough situation for those nice b2b things because On top of it, Google is just not great at B2B because, let's face it, most people do not go on to Google and get they don't know what company you work for. So we've always had that problem that you and I have talked about where a large company doesn't search any different than a small company. So it doesn't know. And that's where that that kind of the user intent thing starts to fall apart because they want to be driven by that, which is fine. But there are these fringe cases with these platforms that cost a lot of money. And Google will probably never really get good at understanding
00:28:54
Speaker
at least not anytime soon, what it is this product actually is so it can generate accordingly. So I think that's been, I don't want to manage every keyword. I just wish there was a happy medium because there's not a lot that you can do in that situation except just kind of manage around what you've got, but it's not ideal.
00:29:10
Speaker
Would you say maybe this is one of the reasons organic search is important still? So it is. Here's the problem though. Oh. They're just filling up more and more space with ads. Okay. It's essentially when you go to Google, I don't know if you noticed, but it's Sort of the equivalent of an an infinite scroll used for search or something. It's like load more results and it doesn't have like page one through Tejas load more results. So it's like the first the whole first page now. It's the map pack. If it's if they have physical locations like they're so it's the AI answers to stuff at the top that summarizes it like
00:29:43
Speaker
organic has gotten pushed so far down now that to your point, it's like, yes, it's important, but users don't want to scroll and keep hitting more results, more results to get to it. So they've created a real conundrum for themselves with this because they were trying to streamline some things, but then it ended up becoming like an ads and AI front page that no one wants to use. Yeah. And they're really hamstringing the advertisers ability to get more specific, to help users find them. A lot of those tools have gone away. So it's a strange time.
00:30:13
Speaker
They've got a lot of like hypocritical things going on, right? Like for instance, the helpful content update. Which is never helpful. Versus this thing, right? Where it's like we've just forced more ads above what we are deeming the quote unquote most helpful content, right? So. Yeah, it's real fun. It's real fun managing ads there right now. So that's my kill. My kill? Yeah.
00:30:40
Speaker
I'm calling it one thing, but I feel like it's bigger. It's a bigger issue than what I'm actually calling it. This was just the last handle I could come up with. So the handle that I came up with was this idea of unbalanced ad spend. And what I mean by that is like companies spending way more or putting more investment or emphasis on performance creative or lead gen and not putting enough emphasis, investment, thought behind brand awareness. I'm going through this with with two brands right now. It's a big problem. And it's and I will tell you not even just as as a content person, as a paid media person, it's very hard. Yeah. Because we run into the same problem where it's like, they're like, we need more. And I'm like, but you
00:31:29
Speaker
you're only spending it, you're only generating demand that's already there. It's like, you know what I mean? It's like you're not creating any demand that'll be there six months from now. You're just focusing on what's there in the next 30 days. Yeah. And it's so short sighted. And it's so hard to get ah ahead of that because you're given a budget. And of course, you want to maximize the bottom of funnel, that's fine. But like, then don't start screaming when, in six weeks, when search drops, because it's the holidays, and you're like, do something, it's like that ship has sailed. Yeah, it is way too late to do anything about that right now. Yeah. And it's
00:32:01
Speaker
I said it's bigger than the kind of name that I've given it because it it doesn't just have to do with ad spend. It has to do with the entirety of your marketing strategy, yeah right? You can't just put all of your chips in the short-term basket of leads today and not enough in the kind of brand and awareness and top of funnel basket for awareness and affinity and trust tomorrow, right?
00:32:28
Speaker
and That ultimately then becomes a lead in six, eight, 12 months down the road, which will not be attributed to the ad spend that you did all that time. but So it's discounted. No one believes it. Right. And so, yeah, it's a hard one because it's, there's a lot of short sightedness in marketing.
00:32:48
Speaker
And a lot of it is just from operating on fear, right? Like we need leads, we need deals, we need pipeline. And in order to do that, we need some sort of lead gen activity yeah right now to hit the number right now. So I think this is just my way of saying like always be that voice of the person that kind of raised their hand and and make sure you continue to push and say like, yes, but in order to kind of lift all tides, brand also needs to be continuously running. It needs to be an investment. We need to continue.
00:33:17
Speaker
things like thought leadership and top of funnel stuff, like really interesting, creative, having a point of view, like all of those things add up to better awareness. And I mean, even like PR and comms, like just getting your name out there sometimes associated with a story that's bigger than your category, bigger than your industry.
00:33:40
Speaker
So, just always be that kind of voice in the back, that person that really believes, like Ari's podcast, Believe in Brand, right? It's the first thing to get cut to. It's the easiest thing to overlook when you're freaking out, because everyone's like, fill the pipe. Shoving money into all this stuff, hoping you get some like white paper downloads. and You're like, this isn't helping us for six months from now. On the back of your head, you're going, so If we manage to kind of salvage this now, what happens in three months when we have the exact same conversation again? Because it's totally going to happen. Yeah. Like, um, yeah. Hi, uh, question. Yeah. i want to know What are we going to do? Begging your pardon. Begging your pardon ah from the peanut gallery.
00:34:18
Speaker
and Respectfully. This has been so fun. I think we need to do another one of these in like six months when there's another new trend that we... Oh yeah, there'll be a whole bunch of new stuff for sure. Yeah, this was a good topic though. It was. Thanks again, Ari. Appreciate it. Yeah, I'm gonna say thanks, Ari. That was great. I feel like you should have just been here listening. I know. We'll have to have him on. He's amazing. Yeah, that'd be fun.
00:34:41
Speaker
Well, thank you guys, everybody. And we appreciate you coming back once again to hear us chatter on about marketing stuff. And that's all for today and hope we'll see you next time. That's marketing, baby. That's marketing, baby. Bye. Thanks for listening to That's Marketing, baby. If you dig what we're putting down, be sure to subscribe and share with your marketing besties because, you know, hot marketers don't gatekeep. And if you're like, this is not enough. I need more. We got you. Rants and Raves is the official newsletter of That's Marketing, baby.
00:35:10
Speaker
Every week, Susan and I share one thing we love and loathe in the world of marketing. Get on the list at thatsmarketingbaby dot.com. Okay. Bye.